


Where to Begin

by ama



Series: Helpless and Hoping [1]
Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Communication Failure, Complicated Relationships, Flirting, Historical References, Hurt/Comfort, Letters, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queer Themes, Rare Pairings, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-11 15:43:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 48,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12938457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/ama
Summary: In the summer of 1946, Leckie travels down to Alabama for Sid’s wedding. Once there, he rekindles a friendship with Eugene Sledge. They’re both a little lost, a little broken, a little heartsick; it might not seem like the best basis for a relationship, but to their surprise they find themselves stumbling towards one anyway.





	1. you're familiar, like my mirror years ago

**Author's Note:**

> First and foremost, the link to the playlist for this fic is [HERE](https://open.spotify.com/user/hkwilliams87/playlist/42XBmalar3o2QqIbY0Xss5?si=isVeltW0QwWybvpQNRlaJQ) on spotify! hoosiersblanket on tumblr did an amazing job, and I listened to the playlist basically the entire time I was writing this fic. (It also provided inspiration for all the chapter titles.) So you should totally check it out. There's also a lovely cover on on tumblr.
> 
> Second, a huge thanks to canadaiansuperhero and thatsnotmozart on tumblr for their comments and corrections; this fic went through quite a few drafts based on their suggestions and it's the better for it.
> 
> And finally, thanks also to everyone who read snippets on tumblr and hyped it up even though I picked another totally random rarepair. Special mention goes to antiquecompass (rivlee on AO3, and if you haven't read Holy Vow of a Teenage Kiss yet then what are you waiting for?), onlythenuns, floorlimes, and the PBB mods!

**July, 1946**

As soon as Leckie stepped out of the train station into the Alabama sunshine, he saw a familiar face.

“Hey—” he blurted out, but to his irritation, no name followed.

He _recognized_ the young man who had just passed him, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember his name. It was Sid’s friend. Sid’s friend… fuck. Leckie hefted his bag and tried to jog after the redhead, but the streets were crowded and the other man was walking with purpose.

“Hey!” he called again, but he didn’t look up. God, what was his _name_? Friend from Mobile—he remembered Sid reading letters from him—he hadn’t been able to join the Corps at first but he joined them on Pavuvu... liked books and the Bible…

Leckie wondered for a moment if the man would at least pause if he started calling out military ranks, but he couldn’t think straight. It had been a long train ride, and it was a hot day, he was sweating, and people kept getting in his way.

“Hey, Scarlett O’Hara!” he shouted with a tinge of desperation, and finally the man slowed down and looked over his shoulder.

So did at least a third of the people on the street, and most of them were probably thinking not-too-flattering things about his mental state, but Leckie ignored them, because the redhead had made eye contact and he saw the flash of recognition on his face. He turned around and started walking towards Leckie. He paused about a foot away and the crowd flowed around them like a river around rocks.

“Hey, Lucky,” he said in a hesitant voice.

“Hey, Scarlett,” Leckie grinned. He held out his hand triumphantly, and the other man huffed as he shook it.

“Sledge,” he corrected. “Eugene Sledge.”

“Close enough. Good to see you came through okay.”

“Yeah,” Sledge said without smiling. “Didn’t see you much. When did you get out?”

“Off the line? Second day on Peleliu; I’ve got some impressive scars if you’re ever interested, spent a couple months in the hospital. You?”

“Whole run. Duration on the line and six in China.” Sledge shifted his weight and looked around them. “You here for the wedding?”

“I’m not keeping you from anything, am I?”

“No, no.” Sledge looked embarrassed at being caught out. He held up a book, a short and sturdy black-bound volume. “I was just going to the library to return this, that’s all. Nothing important.”

Leckie reached out and plucked the book from his hand, tilting it to read the name printed along the spine.

“Hemingway,” he said, his voice warm with approval even though he was more or less neutral on the subject of Hemingway. “What’d you think?”

“Not bad,” Sledge shrugged. “Not my favorite, either. I don’t think I’ll need to deprive the people of Alabama for any longer than I already have.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Leckie offered.

He swung his sea bag over his shoulder and stepped back into the flow of people on the sidewalk. Sledge hesitated, huddled by the brick wall of the nearest building for another moment, in a jacket that bagged at the elbows and seemed to swallow him. Leckie felt a powerful urge to scoop him up and pull him into the sunlight, like a little quivering big-pawed puppy found on the street, even though he obviously preferred to be alone.

“Are you sure?” Sledge asked hesitantly. “You don’t need to—I don’t know—check into a hotel or something? Is Sid expecting you?”

“Nope, I came down early,” Leckie said. He offered no explanation, and immediately launched into conversation in the hopes Sledge wouldn’t ask for one. “I’d rather tail after you. The first thing I like to do in any new town is find a book and a drink, and it takes a local to point me in the right direction. Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” Sledge said, and once he had resigned himself to the company he really did seem to mean it.

They started down the street together. Leckie tipped his head back and enjoyed the play of the sun on his face. It was a long train ride from Jersey to Alabama, and he’d been seated next to a grouchy octogenarian who had kept the shade pulled down for most of it. It was nice to be in the light again, even though the stuffiness of the train had given away now to sweltering humidity. He pushed his curls back with one hand and thought of Pavuvu with something approaching fondness.

“Jee- _zus_ ,” he exhaled. “It always this hot down here?”

“First time this far south, Yankee?” Sledge asked, the corner of his mouth curving up.

“I’ve been to the South Pacific,” Leckie reminded him. “In this country, you mean? Well, I made it all the way down to Parris Island once. Miserable place. Wouldn’t recommend it. Terrible food.”

“Well hey, compared to what came later…”

“You’ve got a point there.”

They exchanged a commiserating glance.

“It’s less than a mile’s walk, just down this way, so you don’t have long to suffer. And there’s a nice little bar just tucked around the corner, too, if you get too thirsty on the walk.” Sledge leaned his head back, too, perhaps hoping to catch a breeze, but the air was sticky and heavy, and he sighed. “It is a bit hotter than usual,” he admitted. “I was out by the bay just now. Nice wind out there.”

“Yeah? How’s your sea view out here? Back home all we’ve got is the Hackensack River, which… well, it just sort of lies there, and any breeze you get off it isn’t worth sticking your face in.”

They continued with such idle chatter as they walked, comparing cities. Sledge was fond of Mobile—he occasionally pointed out interesting vistas or prominent buildings as they walked—and while Leckie was less fond of Rutherford, he had enough regional pride that they could engage in a spirited but harmless reprisal of the last century’s great war.

When they reached the library, Sledge returned his book and made polite conversation with the librarian on the desk; evidently he was a regular. The librarian, upon being told that Leckie was something of a librarian himself, wouldn’t let them leave until they had checked out a book each, and Leckie walked away with a copy of _The Black Rose_ that he had no intention of reading before the weekend was over.

“If I forget to return this, you’re paying the fine,” he said, waving the book  threateningly at Sledge.

“Fine,” Sledge shrugged. “Then you’re paying for our drinks.”

“Hm?”

“You said you wanted to find a bar and a library, didn’t you? Well, I’m nothing if not a good host. Like I said, there’s a good one just around the corner here.”

“Oh. Hey, thanks.”

He must have sounded surprised, because Sledge looked up and raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Nothing, just—we don’t really know each other. I accosted you on the street,” Leckie chuckled.

“What else have I got to do with myself? Besides, you’re a friend of Sid’s. You know, until this whole war broke out, Sid didn’t have a single friend who wasn’t a friend of mine, too. Shame to let that change, huh?”

“Well, when you put it like that.” Leckie glanced at him. “You guys have known each other for a long time, huh?” he said thoughtfully.

“Best friends since third grade. Hated each other in second grade, but don’t bring that up in front of him—bad blood,” he said with mock solemnity, and Leckie laughed.

“Sure, I’ll keep that in mind. Is this it?”

“Yep.”

The bar was discreetly tucked away on the end of the street, with curtains shading the windows. A jangle of bells rang in chorus when Sledge opened the door.

It was a classy place; everywhere Leckie looked he saw polished mahogany and brass finishings. Sledge gestured at a low table with two empty green armchairs looming over it, and Leckie set down his bag before they stepped up to the bar and leaned against it to catch the attention of the bartender.

“Afternoon, Eugene,” the man said with a cheerful nod. He was a portly gentleman, with enough gray hair at his temples to be called distinguished. “How’s the family doing?”

“They’re okay, Mr. Johnson, thank you.”

“You remind your father he’s got a free beer with his name on it, won’t you? Haven’t seen him down here in a long time.”

“I will.” The bartender’s gaze wandered over to Leckie, and Sledge gestured towards him. “This is my friend Bob Leckie, Mr. Johnson. He just rolled into town for Sid’s wedding—he and Sid served together, a bit before my time.”

“Well then it’s good to meet you, young man,” Johnson said, extending a beefy hand. Leckie shook.

“Likewise. It’s quite a place you’ve got here.”

“Best bar in town,” Sledge assured him, and Johnson waved his hand.

“I do my best,” he said modestly, but Leckie could tell they were acting out a familiar ritual, and he smiled to himself. “What can I get you boys?”

“Well, like Sledge said, I’m a new arrival in your neck of the woods,” Leckie said, surveying the line of bottles behind the counter. “And I’ve been taunted by Southerners enough for my various choices in life, so rather than risk more mockery I think I’ll leave it up to the dealer to make sure I end up with the best Alabama’s got to offer.”

“Oh ho, that’s an answer a man likes to hear,” Johnson chuckled. He wagged a warning finger. “But if I pour something in your glass and you pull a face at me, you’re out on your ear, I promise you that.”

“Mr. Johnson, if the Japanese Imperial Army and the US Marine Corps together can’t come up with a liquor I won’t drink, I doubt you can.”

This produced another round of chuckling, and Johnson turned around and picked up a bottle of Old Crow. He poured a glass for Leckie, extolling the virtues of the product, and waited until Leckie had taken a sip and declared his admiration before turning to Sledge.

“And what’ll you have, Eugene?”

“The same, thanks.”

“You know, the first time you came in here askin’ for a whisky I almost fell right over,” Johnson said as he poured, shaking his head. “I was sitting right here in this bar the night you were born. Of course I wasn’t selling alcohol back then,” he said to Leckie virtuously. “This was back in, what was it, ’23? It was a cigar club during the dry years. The doctor bought a whole mess of cigars off me. He looked like he needed a stiff one, too, after all you put your poor mama through, a tiny little fellow demanding to come into the world a whole month before your time.”

Sledge had apparently heard this story before and was doing his best to not roll his eyes, so Leckie stepped in.

“I’ve got plenty of questions,” he grinned. “But for Sledge’s sake I’ll stick to just two for now—first, what’s your brand of cigars, and second, what are your feelings on the United States Army?”

“My son-in-law was in the Army.”

“Ah. So maybe I shouldn’t say…”

“My son-in-law’s a sumbitch, you talk away.”

Leckie told the story of his raid on the Army’s stash at Guadalcanal to uproarious laughter from both men; when he got to the part about Larson’s theft of the crate of Johnnie Walker Red, Sledge tilted his head.

“You know, that might’ve been responsible for my very first legal sip of whisky,” he said thoughtfully.

“First sip of whisky, you mean?” Johnson said with faux sternness.

“Yessir, of course sir. I turned 21 during my service,” he explained to Leckie. “On V-J Day I was sitting around with some of my buddies, and an officer comes up and offers us a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red. Might have been a bottle that got passed around from that.”

“Could be,” Leckie shrugged. “’Course, ’42 to ’45, that’s a long time for an officer to resist his gluttonous instincts.”

“True. Besides, I don’t think my lieutenant was on Guadalcanal. He was a replacement after my first CO was killed.”

Leckie could tell without having to ask that Sledge had liked his CO, and all three men were silent for a moment. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, or a gloomy one—just a moment’s recognition that they had gotten more out of the Marine Corps than good stories.

The silence was broken by Johnson placing two more heavy-bottomed glasses in front of them, and producing a bottle of Johnnie Walker from beneath the bar.

“Finish those up, boys,” he said, nodding at their dwindling glasses of Old Crow. “This round’s on me.”

They thanked him profusely and threw back the last of the first round, and took their new glasses back to the table.

“If you can’t get a free round out of Johnson every time you come in, then your mama didn’t raise you with any manners at all,” Sledge said as they sat down.

He had taken a pipe out of his pocket and was chewing absently at the end of it, and momentarily forgot his drink to focus on filling the bowl. Leckie watched him for a moment, and fished a cigarette out of his own pocket; Sledge lit his pipe and offered him the lighter. Ritual complete, they sat back in the plush armchairs and let the soothing scent and taste of tobacco mingle with the whisky.

“Seems like a good man,” Leckie commented.

“Mm.”

Sledge took a sip from his glass. The corner of his mouth twisted, and he held the liquid in his mouth for a moment, savoring it; Leckie could see the moment he swallowed, and he sighed as the alcohol went down. Leckie looked down at his own drink and cleared his throat.

“So what brings you down early?” Sledge asked.

“I was hoping to be more drunk when we got to that part of the conversation,” Leckie grimaced.

“It’s three in the afternoon on a weekday, Leckie—this is as drunk as I’m planning on getting.”

“All right, all right.” He took another sip and pondered his approach for a moment. “Have you ever been in love?”

Sledge seemed to retreat even further into the armchair, and a cautious look stole over his face.

“Why, have you?”

“Ah,” Leckie said with a wry grin. “That is the question. A month ago I would have told you yes, absolutely, but…” He sighed. “There was this girl. I, uh—I’d been sweet on her for a long time. She lived across the street. I thought about her a lot when I was in the Pacific, and then when I got home I asked her out. We dated for a while. She recently she informed me that I was… not as in love with her as I thought I was.”

“Well, who’s she to say?” Sledge said, his eyebrows knotting.

“See, that’s what I thought, but her argument was—strong.” He ruffled his hair and stretched out his legs. “I don’t know. Apparently I have this habit of picking out people I should be in love with and building them up to be something they’re not. Getting attached to the _idea_ of the relationship instead of the relationship itself. I didn’t believe her until I realized that described every relationship I’d ever had. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Hmm.” Sledge sipped from his whisky. “And that was enough to send you down to Alabama?”

“Realizing that I’m incapable of distinguishing between love and wishful thinking, and possibly of feeling legitimate love altogether? Yeah, that drove me to Alabama.”

The other man snorted.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, the other side’s not all it’s cracked up to be, neither.”

“The other side being?”

“Falling in love all the time,” Sledge said casually, rolling his glass around on the rim. “Every day of the week and twice on Sundays, and never really falling out of love with any of them, so everything gets…” He heaved a sigh. “Mixed up. Screwed up and jumbled together. And never ever falling for anyone who could love you back, of course.”

Leckie considered this.

“Show off.”

“You want to trade?”

“I’m okay.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

“I believe it was Socrates who said that if every man in the world were to gather in one place, and bring all their burdens to divide up equally amongst themselves, each one would happily go away bearing only his own.”

“Amen.”

They tapped their glasses, and Leckie took a slow sip. He had tried not to think about Vera at all on the train ride. It had been a week since she broke it off, and he figured that a week should be long enough for him to at least get through a _day_ without thinking about her. Especially when he wasn’t in New Jersey. He still didn’t know what exactly had driven him to call up the train station and change his ticket, whether it was his mother’s disappointed looks, his father’s half-hearted “well, buck up, son”s, or simply the damned view out of his bedroom window. Her front porch separated from his sight by nothing but a gauzy curtain that wasn’t even up to the job.

“It’s not only because she ditched me,” he said abruptly. He wanted to make Sledge understand; he didn’t know Vera, didn’t know anything of the situation, so he might be persuaded to look at it the right way. “She was my… I’m not overly fond of my hometown. Or my family. But when you’re over there, if you don’t have _something_ , you’re just—you need…”

“A touchstone,” Sledge suggested.

“Exactly. Vera was—she was everything that was good about home. I used to write all these letters to her, just to—clear my head. And then I got home and everything was… everyone wanted to act like nothing had changed, but for me it seemed like everything had. Everything except her. And now—I don’t know.” The story was beginning to sound pathetic. Leckie swallowed past the lump in his throat and tried to inject some cheerfulness in his voice. “What was yours? Your touchstone, I mean, if you had one?”

For a moment Sledge didn’t respond; he seemed lost in thought. Then he came to a decision. He took a book out of his pants pocket and handed it across the table.

Leckie’s eyes widened in surprise; he recognized it immediately as the small copy of the New Testament Sledge had had with him on Pavuvu, and he was shocked that it had survived. The cover was cracked in several places, and the edges of the pages were swollen and distorted by moisture. All of the gold leaf had flaked off the title, leaving only faint indentations, and as Leckie began to flip through, he spotted smears of dirt and rust-brown blood. There were loose sheets of paper stuck between the pages, too, and here and there he found pencil notes—tallies and charts on blank pages, sentences scribbled in the margins.

“You carried this the whole time?”

“Mmhm.” Sledge watched Leckie’s hands as he continued to peruse the book, but he didn’t look inclined to snatch it back. “Gotta admit, there were times I thought about getting rid of it, but… by that time I’d made too many notes, and I didn’t want to lose those.”

“And you’re still keeping it on you.”

“Thought it might come in handy if anyone back home tried to take a shot at me,” Sledge said breezily. “Teddy Roosevelt survived an assassination attempt that way.”

“It was a speech, folded up small. And he kept it in his breast pocket, which is a more useful place if you’re worried about assassins.”

“Protecting the femoral artery,” Sledge grinned, patting his leg. Leckie snorted.

“Sure.” He paused in his reading. “You’re missing a page here.”

“Am I?” Sledge leaned forward.

“Romans, chapter 1.”

For a moment, he thought he saw Sledge’s eyes widen, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Well, not surprised. Accidents happen, especially in a war zone.”

He held out his hand. Leckie looked down at the open book again, curious. There was a groove in the next five or six pages of the book, and several had a jagged edge near the top where the paper had begun to tear away from the binding. It didn’t look like an accident. If he had to guess, he would have said that someone had deliberately tried to tear out a section, before calming down and tearing out a single sheet instead. He could tell there was only one page missing from the scrap left at the bottom.

But Leckie saw no reason to argue for his theory. There was only so much you could tell from some indentations in a book, and in any case it was none of his business. He handed the bible back.

“Well, it’ll serve you better than a broad, I think we can agree on that.”

“I’d say so.” Sledge raised his glass in a toast, and Leckie returned it. There was a comfortable silence for a minute, and then Sledge sighed. “God, I can’t believe Sid’s getting _married_.”

“Me neither,” Leckie chuckled. “Took the kid our whole month in Melbourne to seal the deal with his Aussie girlfriend, and turns out he’s the first of all of us to get hitched. Jesus Christ.”

“How d’you think I feel? I only got back in February, and right away Sid’s telling me he’s getting married! And to Mary Houston, no less.”

“What about this Mary Houston?” Leckie asked curiously. He knew little about her except for a few vague, adoring passages in the three letters he’d gotten from Sid since he got back. He was curious—Sid was the kind of kid who tended to look at people through rose-colored glasses, and he thought he’d detected a hint of bitterness in Sledge’s voice. He squinted at the other man for a moment, and in a grave voice asked, “Are you in love with her?”

Sledge snorted.

“No,” he said in a dryly matter-of-fact tone. He glanced up and grinned. “No more than any other man in Mobile, Alabama, at least. Everyone’s a little in love with Mary. She’s a great girl. But it’s a little like coming home and finding out your buddy’s getting married to Betty Grable.”

“I get it,” Leckie chuckled. “How’s Mobile been treating you since you got back?” he asked, resting his elbows on his knees.

“Hm?”

“Aside from the, you know, endless heartache. Any notable ladies in tow?”

“No,” Sledge repeated shortly, with a grin on his face that made Leckie think of a twist of lemon.

“Come on,” he wheedled. “I’ll forgo the notable ladies requirement in favor of a really good heartbreak story. I gave you one of mine.”

Sledge was about to take a sip from his glass, but he paused and his brow creased. His movements, when he took a sip and set the glass down, were careful, measured.

“A story with ladies of little note, or a story with notable non-ladies?”

He spoke in a breezy voice, like the words were banter that barely mattered, but at the end of his sentence his eyes flickered up and examined Leckie’s face, and Leckie paused to consider the implications of his own question. In the back of his mind, something slid into place, and he froze for a moment, keenly aware of Sledge waiting for a response. To cover his confusion, he gulped his whisky and cleared his throat.

“Whichever you like,” he said flippantly. The corner of his mouth tilted up in a hesitant smile, and Sledge seemed satisfied, at least for the moment. He shrugged.

“Either way, I can’t think of anything for now. But I’ll get back to you some other time.” He swirled his glass again and knocked back the last few drops of whisky, and stood. “I think that’s all for me, Leckie. You’ll be at the dinner tomorrow, won’t you? And the wedding, of course.”

“Of course,” Leckie confirmed. “You won’t be getting rid of me too quick.”

“Good,” Sledge smiled. “Have you already booked a hotel?”

“Yes.”

He produced a slip of paper with the address written down; Sledge assured him that it was a decent establishment, and not too far from their current location, and that he could easily catch a cab from that location to the Phillips’ house without paying too steep a fee. They said their goodbyes, to each other and from Sledge to Johnson, and then the young man left, bible in his pocket and library book in his hand. Leckie remained where he was for a moment, staring at nothing, then drained his glass and looked up towards the bar.

“How about another round?” he asked, and the old bartender was happy to oblige.

An hour later, a bellhop was showing Leckie into his room. Leckie tipped him and fell back on the bed with a sigh. It was good to be alone for a few minutes. Good to actually stretch his legs and relax his muscles. He had intended to unpack, find a map of Mobile, and wander for a few more hours, but now that he was in bed he found himself very reluctant to move. Maybe he would get through a few chapters of _The Black Rose_ after all.

As he rolled over to reach for his bag, though, his eye was caught by the stark red cover of the Bible on the bedside table. Leckie considered it for a moment, and then gave into his curiosity and picked it up, flicking through the pages until he reached the first chapter of Romans. It was the usual diatribe, _I serve in my spirit the gospel_ , _it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believeth_ , etc—nothing, in his opinion, that could provoke strong emotions. He was about to set it down again when his eye drifted to the last two verses on the page, and he paused.

_For this cause God gave them up unto vile passions: for their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of woman, burned in their lust toward one another, men engaged with men in shameful acts, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due._

His eyes lingered on those verses for a long moment, and then he closed the book with a definitive snap.


	2. that old game again

“Another!” Chuckler cried, a declaration that was immediately echoed by Hoosier, Leckie, and Runner. He seized the neck of the bottle and poured a generous glass of bourbon, but when he tried to foist it on Sid, the groom laughed and held up his hands.

“Come on, now, guys, that’s enough. Mary’ll have my head if I show up at that altar smelling like booze—and after the gentleman’s dinner last night, I think her father might already be looking at me funny.”

“Hey, we didn’t get you _drunk_ ,” Hoosier said with all the innocence of a priest.

“It wasn’t from lack of trying,” Sledge muttered. Chuckler immediately rounded on him and shoved the drink in his hand.

“Here, Sledgehammer,” he said cheerfully, and then poured out another round for the rest of the groomsmen. Sledge looked quite bemused, and for a moment he glanced at Leckie with a hint of a grin on his mouth, then he shrugged. He raised the glass, toasting no one and nothing in particular, and took a sip.

Hoosier slung an arm around Leckie’s neck and handed him another glass, which Leckie accepted with a muttered “cheers.” Hoosier claimed a glass for his own, swiping it from beneath Runner’s hand and ignoring his friend’s indignant squawk, and Leckie tapped their drinks together. He sipped this one slowly—even if none of _them_ had to worry about the bride sniffing their breath at the altar, it would probably be best if the groomsmen could walk down the aisle in a straight line.

The wedding was being held at the Phillips family house. The marines made up all five of the groomsmen, Sid having no brothers, and aside from Sledge they were all staying at the hotel in town. The night before had been the gentleman’s dinner with all of Sid’s male relatives, and although they hadn’t been drunk enough to make a scene, they had certainly consumed enough to develop mild hangovers; even so they had arrived at the Phillips residence by late morning, ready to offer physical labor if necessary and set the groom at ease if not.

They’d broken out the bourbon the moment they retired to don their dress blues, and an hour or two later the glasses had been scattered among the room and they were all pleasantly buzzed, at least. Leckie was quite enjoying himself. If he had been asked, he wouldn’t have said it’d been a long time since he’d seen his friends, but… well, he’d missed these crazy bastards.

“You know what this reminds me of?” Hoosier mused. “First night in Melbourne.”

“You weren’t awake for the first night in Melbourne,” Runner pointed out, while Chuckler cackled in the background.

“Oh, but I remember it well. Heard y’all talk about it enough. Leckie wasted, making a fool of himself—”

“I’m not—” Leckie protested, ready to rescind his affectionate thoughts. Hoosier plowed right over him.

“Sid _somehow_ being the first of all of us to get hold of a pretty girl, and worried about the Articles of War her family’s setting out.”

“Hey now,” Sid said, and for just a moment his smile could almost be called roguish—but then the boyhood charm won out, and he shrugged. “Sledgehammer, gimme the rest of that glass, I could do for another one.”

“Okay, that’s going to stop first,” Sledge said, dangling the whiskey just out of reach, and they all laughed.

Chuckler had been the one to stumble on ‘Sledgehammer’ the night before, when Sledge had been introduced to Peaches, Runner, Hoosier, Chuckler, and Johnny Reb and looked at all of them like they were nuts. He had grudgingly admitted, after dinner, that it wasn’t even the first time someone had called him that, which they thought was wildly funny and a clear indication that great minds thought alike.

“Well, you’ve got to have something!” Chuckler pressed.

“No, I don’t—Gene’ll do just fine. And don’t _you_ say a word,” he added, glaring at Leckie, who mimed locking his lips shut. This would have prompted more questions, of course, if Sledge hadn’t taken the opportunity to snag the last empty glass—who knew whose it had been to start with—and pour another finger of whiskey. He raised it in a real toast this time. “Okay, let’s do this right, now, jarheads. To Sid and Mary.”

“Sid and Mary,” they echoed dutifully, while Sid did his best “aw shucks.” His cheeks were pink, but even so he looked smart in his dress blues, and there was something genuinely fond around the corners of his smile.

“To my best man,” he said, returning the toast. “And the rest of you knuckleheads who showed up, too.”

“This fuckin’ kid,” Chuckler laughed, putting Sid in a gentle headlock so as not to mess up his hair for the pictures.

They all joined in, delivering hugs and playful punches, until Sid’s father opened the door a few minutes later, beaming. He looked a lot like Sid, although his hair was starting to go grey on the top.

“Ready, son?” he asked. “Y’all _look_ like you’ve been having fun,” he chuckled as he surveyed the room.

“Yeah.” Sid shook off his friends and fetched his cover and his white gloves from the bed; the others scrambled to do the same, except Sid, who was wearing a simple blue suit. “Yeah, I’m ready,” Sid said, taking a deep breath.

Leckie tugged his gloves on and fitted his cover snugly on his head.

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends,” he declaimed. Hoosier slapped the back of his head and they filed out the door.

\---

The Phillipses seemed to know an awful lot of people.

Leckie had been genuinely surprised when he first saw the house; it was bigger than his parents’ by several bedrooms, and sat on a large plot of land, in a nice neighborhood, surrounded by the kinds of trees he had frequently seen lining the grounds of plantations in old paintings. And yet, as improbable as it might seem, they had managed to invite enough guests to fill three-quarters of the yard with people. They had ordered a portable dance floor and surrounded it with intimate round tables. A bar table bordered the party on one side, and a constant stream of waiters from the kitchen kept the guests well fed with hors d’oeuvres, dinner, and cake. Several of the Alabama guests took the time to inform Leckie that this was a remarkably mild Alabama summer, despite the fact that he was sweating through his blues. Certainly the Southern ladies in their light muslin dresses showed no reluctance to make good use of the dance floor, and Leckie was enough of a gentleman to oblige them.

After a while, though, the dancing got old. Truth be told, Leckie had never really enjoyed this kind of flirting, the careful politics of choosing a partner, the pressure of being light on one’s feet in every sense of the word, the maneuvering that had to be done so that one could relieve oneself from the role of professional punch-fetcher. It took more energy than he was willing to expend on any woman, one week After Vera.

The problem was that the dress blues drew women like iron flakes in the wake of a magnet, and after sitting down by himself twice and being approached twice, Leckie realized that he had to change his strategy. He extricated himself from his latest partner and turned around, and his gaze locked instantly on Sledge, sitting by himself at a table and looking away from the dance floor.

There was a stirring in his gut, and Leckie paused. He was wary; he wanted to decide if this was a good idea before he reached the table.

Of course it wasn’t a _good_ idea. It never was. That was why he tried to chase away this kind of idea whenever it reared its head. It was dangerous, because a torn page of a bible meant jack shit at the end of the day, and he had no idea how Sledge would react. It was foolhardy, because they were in the middle of a crowd of people, all of whom knew Sledge and a number of whom knew Leckie, too. It was imprudent, because if Leckie allowed himself to make this a habit, then he would be forced to reconcile some things he had thus far kept at bay.

 _But—_ a hopeful, wistful, greedy little voice in his head whispered. _But_ …

Leckie took a breath and closed his eyes for half a second, and then he affixed a cocky grin on his face and walked over to the outdoor bar, which was staffed by two men distributing punch, champagne, and both red and white wine. He procured a glass of chardonnay and a glass of bordeaux, not knowing Sledge’s preference, and made a beeline for the redhead’s table.

The last time he had sought out a man was the day of his release from the hospital, when instead of going home right away he had spent the night in New York City. His head had been reeling all night with thoughts of the war and the bomb and the fact that he was alive and the fact that he would have to go home, that home still existed, and he had greatly appreciated the assistance of two different men in two different alleys for making his thoughts go quiet for a moment. They had both had champagne on their lips—even the queer bars were wild with celebration that night.

The second to last time had been in Melbourne, after Stella. Leckie had been pissed that night, pissed and looking for rough trade, and all he had found was a farmer in from the country who was built like an ox but far too nice. Probably why Leckie had pulled a gun on his commanding officer later that same night, because he hadn’t been able to let off steam as well as he’d have liked.

Still, the fact of the matter was that when the world tipped over, Leckie went looking for men. It was as good an excuse as any, and the world had been tipping over a lot lately.

“Red or white, Scarlett?”

Sledge looked up at him and laughed.

“You know, you really need to stop calling me that,” he admonished, but he accepted the glass of bordeaux.

Leckie recognized that as an offer, and he sat down in the seat before Sledge, leaning back and resting his arm on the table. He was happy he had decided to wear his dress blues; he doubted they would have the same effect on Sledge as they did on civilian women, but a man moved differently in dress blues, and it made him feel better.

“Oh, ’fraid I can’t do that. My nicknames always stick, ask anybody.”

“Most of them seem silly, if you ask me,” he said breezily, and Leckie heaved a great sigh.

“And here I thought I was being downright clever.”

“Now let me just ask, which thing are you prouder of—naming me after a brunette woman from Georgia with a red name, or naming your friend from Indiana _Hoosier_? See, the reason why I ask is because from my view, those are both stupid, but for different reasons, so I’m curious.”

Leckie couldn’t keep the grin from spreading over his face at that, and Sledge grinned back and leaned back in his seat. Leckie’s eyes tracked the movement of his hand as he swirled his wine glass, playful rather than pretentious, and took a sip. Their eyes met over the rim of the glass and Sledge quirked a challenging eyebrow.

“That was mean,” Leckie admonished. “A lesser man might be wounded at that, but luckily, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Sledge was caught off guard by his own laughter. He inclined his head in acknowledgment of the point.

“Enjoying the party?”

“It’s not half bad.”

“That’s all?” Sledge chuckled. “I’d’ve said you were doing pretty well for yourself.”

“It’s just the blues,” Leckie shook his head. “Haven’t had a moment to breathe all night. You’re lucky you’re not in the uniform.” He affected a casual manner and hid his face behind his wine glass. “Guess you’re not interested in that kind of attention.”

It took Sledge a moment to process what Leckie had said; when he realized, he looked up and met his gaze. He had such an intense stare. Dark eyes beneath straight brows. Leckie tried to keep his expression as neutral as possible.

“Guess not,” Sledge replied slowly. “You don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you? Left my pipe at home.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Leckie took out his cigarette case and his lighter. Sledge plucked a cigarette from the row and put it in his mouth again, and then he paused. He looked Leckie in the eye again. And he tilted his head, just so, as he leaned forward for Leckie to light it for him.

“Thank you.”

Leckie nodded mutely, distracted by the racing of his own thoughts. He didn’t do this very often, and still less did he do it at respectable places like this. When he went looking for company it was a different kind of game: he would go somewhere that had a certain reputation, make eye contact with a certain kind of person, find someplace private, and then that was it. No fuss.

This required more subtlety. But he could play this game, too.

His fingers fumbled, knocking out two cigarettes instead of one, but once he had an inhale of his own smoke he felt a bit calmer. He had initiated this thread of the conversation, after all, and Sledge had picked it up quite readily. There was something vaguely feminine in the incline of his head—nothing remarkable, nothing overt, just a subtle hint that he was receptive to Leckie’s intimations. Equal parts curiosity, coquetry, and challenge.

_Do you actually want me? Well, come get me._

“We forgot to make a toast,” Leckie said, clearing his throat.

“We did.”

“What shall we toast?”

“Well, we’re at a wedding. The custom down here is to toast the bride and groom at a wedding.”

“Come now, Sledge, where’s your originality?” Leckie admonished, and Sledge laughed.

“I don’t think I’ve ever claimed to be original. Just your average kind of fella, albeit devastatingly handsome and incredibly clever. But original? No.”

“Is it too much to ask for all three?” Leckie asked lightly, holding his gaze again. The moment stretched just a fraction too long and his heart began to pound, but he ignored it. He raised his glass. “I’ve got it—to Sid, for bringing us together.”

“We can’t toast the groom and not the bride,” Sledge protested. “Anyone overheard us, they’d skin us alive.”

“Fine, then.” Leckie lifted his glass higher. “The US Marine Corps.”

“I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear it,” Sledge snorted, and Leckie knew he was in. Sledge raised his glass. “The US Marine Corps.”

They didn’t leave right away. Sledge finished his wine and asked if Leckie would get him a glass of punch, another little feminine touch that Leckie accepted with gallantry. When he returned they got distracted, talking about their fellow guests—Sledge sharing choice bits of gossip and witty observations about the locals, Leckie dragging up the most embarrassing stories he could think of about Chuckler, Runner, Hoosier, and especially Sid. After about thirty-five minutes, they were having such a good time that Sledge’s posture had relaxed. He was leaning closer, laughing more, even reaching out, once or twice, to grip Leckie’s arm. Each time sent a little thrill up Leckie’s spine, but he couldn’t help but scan the nearby tables, too. Nobody seemed to notice that anything untoward was happening, but they _could_ at any moment.

“It’s getting a little rowdy out here,” he commented finally. “Is there someplace we could get a couple minutes alone? Have another smoke, maybe?”

Sledge locked eyes with him and a red flush spread across his face, although Leckie wasn’t sure if that was due to his question or the alcohol. Sledge had polished off the first glass of punch and was making headway on another.

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Um, yeah, I could—there’s a spot.”

“Great.” Leckie stood up. Sledge did the same and immediately stumbled, slapping his palm flat on the table for balance. Leckie reacted quickly, reaching out to steady him by the elbow, and Sledge snorted and leaned against him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, it always hits me when I stand up. I’m fine.”

He stood up on his own and straightened his jacket, clearing his throat, and repeated “I’m fine” as Leckie eyed him warily.

“You sure?”

“You promised me a smoke,” Sledge reminded him, poking his chest, and glided past him.

They slipped through the crowd and crossed the boundary of the reception. Leckie half expected someone to stop them, but the sun was making its slow summer descent towards the horizon, and no one seemed to notice too figures in the fading light.

“It’s not far,” Sledge said. “Just over here, those trees there.”

He pointed at a little copse of trees at the edge of the yard. There was a faintly-worn dirt path that led up to it, and as they got closer Leckie spotted a whitewashed shed tucked in among the trees.

“This is a nice little spot,” he said approvingly. “It’s funny to me how you’re only, what, ten minutes out from the city proper, and you’ve got trees and privacy and quiet.”

“’S a nice neighborhood here,” Sledge nodded. “Now this is just on the border of the Phillipz—Phillipses property. Me and Sid, we’ve got a place further down that way in the woods… but when we were kids we always used to meet here first. Good place to start.”

“It’s nice,” Leckie repeated.

“Do you, um. Do you have a smoke?” Sledge asked.

He couldn’t lift his eyes above knee height, and his fingers tapped against the side of his leg. Leckie wondered where the confidence of the last three-quarters of an hour had disappeared to, but it seemed impolite to ask. He stepped closer to Sledge, angling his body so the other man was crowded against the wall of the shed. Not pinned—but crowded close enough to put the thought in both their minds. Sledge swallowed and met his gaze.

“Did you bring me out here to ask for a smoke?” Leckie asked seriously. Sledge swallowed again.

“No.”

“Good.”

Leckie didn’t waste any time—no need to let Sledge get himself worked up—he just stepped closer, put his hand on Sledge’s cheek, and kissed him. Sledge’s mouth was slack against his at first but then he kissed back with a soft grunt in the back of his throat. He reached up with one hand and tried to grab Leckie’s shoulder, but the material of his dress blue coat was too thick, and he just rested his hand there instead. Once he got started there was no hesitation in his body, and when Leckie slipped a hand around Sledge’s thigh the younger man gasp and pressed closer.

“We can—” he said in a strangled voice. “My house—my parent’s house—it’s just over there. We could go back—”

“Yeah?” Leckie murmured, kissing Sledge’s neck just above his collar. “What are you thinking about?”

“I—want you to—fuck me,” Sledge said in a voice as determined as it was stilted, and Leckie’s eyebrows rose.

“Well, kid, when you put it like that, who’s gonna say no, huh?” He dropped a light kiss to Sledge’s mouth and took hold of his hips. “Let me get another minute of this, first.”

He really did like the idea of pinning Sledge against the shed. And as much as he didn’t want to get caught, the noise of the wedding in the background gave him a little reckless rush he didn’t want to run away from just yet.

But the moment he began to push Sledge back, the other man stumbled again and totally lost his balance. He would have fallen down if Leckie hadn’t already been holding onto him, and this time Leckie couldn’t brush it off.

“Jesus, are you okay?” he demanded. He got Sledge steadied and examined his face intently, ignored his mumbled assurances. “You’re sloshed.”

“Kinda have to be, don’t I?” Sledge said nonchalantly. He had hooked his arms around Leckie’s neck for balance and he kept kissing him, nuzzling against the side of his neck and jaw and not, apparently, noticing the way Leckie was drawing back.

“Not really. Usually there’s—well, there’s a line.”

“I’m just saying, if I wasn’t drunk I’d never work up the nerve,” he laughed, and _that_ startled Leckie back far enough for Sledge to notice.

“You’re a _virgin_.”

“I—” Most of Sledge’s face was already red, from the alcohol and the excitement, but the color spread to the last few untouched spaces. “Well, I—technically yes, but it’s—I mean I’ve, I’ve _been_ with other men, I just haven’t—”

“Okay.” Leckie stepped back, defeated, and ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Okay, I’m sorry. Listen, Sledge, you’re a nice guy and all, but—”

“Oh come on,” Sledge said, affronted. “Everyone has to start somewhere, don’t they? Like I said, it’s not like I _never_ —”

“No, no, it’s not that,” Leckie lied. “It’s just—Jesus, Sledge, it’s one thing to be a little tipsy, but when you can’t even walk straight, and for your first time—I don’t feel right about it. I mean, hell, if something hurts are you sure you’re going to notice and be able to tell me about it? I just don’t feel right.”

“Sure I will. Would. I—how likely would you say that would be?” he asked in an anxious aside, and Leckie sighed and reached for his arm.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get back to the wedding.”

“No, come on,” Sledge said, attempting to rally. “Leckie, I—can we just—can we talk about it? We can have a cup of coffee, if you like. I…” He took a deep breath and spoke in a low voice, and for a moment Leckie was almost willing to believe he wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t slurring as bad, at least. “I may have gone a little overboard, but—it’s not as bad as you’re thinking. I’m not _scared_ , okay, I _want_ to, it’s just that I don’t know anybody in Mobile so I’ve had nothing to do but sit around and think. It’s—it’s not a big deal. But I feel better because I know you.”

“Eugene,” Leckie said in as gentle a tone he could manage, even though his heart was throbbing in his chest like the booming reverberations of an engine in a ship hull. “You don’t really know me.”

Sledge quieted fast. He seemed to shrink, too, and pale, and if Leckie hadn’t already felt a bit awful, he would now.

“Right,” Sledge mumbled. “Right… sorry.”

“It’s nothing. Come on, let’s go back.”

He tugged on Sledge’s arm again, and the other man stumbled forward one step before digging in his heels. Leckie was about to ask him what was wrong when he noticed that Sledge really had gone pale, to the point where his face looked almost waxy, and his lips were pressed tight together. Sirens started ringing in Leckie’s ears. He stepped quickly to the side and stretched his arm around Sledge’s back, supporting him just as he bent in half and vomited into the grass.

“Watch your shoes,” he sighed. “Way things are going nowadays, you’ll have to wear them to a lot more weddings soon enough.”

Sledge laughed and retched again, and Leckie winced.

“Sorry.”

“’M sorry,” Sledge moaned. “Shouldn’t’ve—” He retched again, but nothing came out but bile. “—drank so much. Damn.”

He pushed his hair out of his face with a shaking hand, and Leckie patted him on the back.

“Okay. Come on, sit down—over here.”

Leckie guided him to a spot two feet away and helped him to sit down in the clean grass.

“I’m, uh, I’m going to get you a glass of water, and… is there someone I can…?”

“No,” Sledge said miserably. His eyes began to water, and Leckie resisted the urge to groan.

“C’mon, Eugene, I just need someone who can help you get home. Ideally someone other than Sid.”

“M’brother,” Sledge said finally, sighing. “Edward. Looks like me, but blonde and uglier.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back.”

Not trusting Eugene’s description, Leckie chose to forgo searching for Edward Sledge and simply approached the first person he heard speaking with a local accent, a grandmotherly-type woman who presumably knew everything there was to know about everyone in Mobile. She pointed to Edward in the crowd, and Leckie took a moment to silently apologize for his lack of faith in Sledge’s judgement. “Like me, but blonde” was a fair description of the eldest Sledge brother; he also had a naturally tan complexion and a few inches on Eugene, although Leckie privately declined to comment on which one was more attractive. Different strokes for different folks, and all.

Edward was sitting at a table with a pretty blonde woman. Leckie crossed the yard to reach them just as they were getting up to dance.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt—are you Edward?”

“I am,” the man said, forehead crinkled.

“Eugene asked me to find you. He’s—” He paused, not so much because he needed to search for a word but to imbue the next one with meaning. “—ill. He could use some help.”

“ _Eugene_?” Edward repeated incredulously.

“It’s not his heart, is it?” the blonde woman said, clutching at Edward’s arm. “I thought you said that was all cleared up.”

“No,” Leckie said in a short voice, and her mouth formed a little o.

“Well, you’d better go, Edward,” she said with a lilt of disapproval in her voice.

“Yes, I guess I should—won’t be long,” he assured her, and he and Leckie set off towards the little copse, dodging effusive wedding guests calling for Edward’s attention. “My wife, Martha,” he said apologetically. “Her family’s got a little bit of Methodism down the line somewhere. Just how drunk _is_ my little brother?”

“I’m not sure,” Leckie shrugged. “I didn’t notice at first, but he was unsteady on his feet and then he nearly ruined a nice pair of shoes. Oh, hang on.”

They stopped by the bar and Leckie requested a glass of water, and then they kept walking.

“Eugene’s never been one to overindulge, as far as I’m aware,” Edward said, shaking his head in a what-a-shame kind of way. “Then again, he was just a kid when I went off to boot camp and then so did he—and there’s a world of difference between seventeen and twenty-two, isn’t there?”

“I suppose there is.”

Inside Leckie’s gut was squirming again. He had been looking for a little bit of a pick-me-up, that was all. A blowjob, maybe, with the attendant ego boost, thrill of discovery, and reassurance that he was attractive and charming enough to move on after a bad break up. Increasingly he was feeling more aware of the fact that he had looked for a bit of fun with a young, drunk, lovelorn virgin—which made him an obtuse moron at best and a real cad at worst.

They reached Sledge a few minutes later. He was still sitting down, leaning against the wall of the shed, but his face had lost some of its pallor.

“Well, look at you,” Edward declared, putting his hands on his hips. Leckie handed Eugene the glass.

“Here.”

“Thank you,” Eugene muttered. “Shut up,” he said to his brother miserably.

“Hey now, that’s not something you should be saying to someone who’s going to keep Mama and Daddy from finding out about this. Here, come on.”

Edward bent his knees and helped Eugene stand; he swayed but managed to stand up mostly on his own power, which seemed to be a good sign.

“Thanks.” Sledge looked at Leckie. His color had returned, and then some—there was a blush on his cheeks under a faint sheen of sweat. “I’m really…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Leckie said, waving it off. “Feel better.”

“He’ll be fine,” Edward declared. “Our folks’ place isn’t far. Thanks for—oh, sorry, I never caught your name.”

“Bob,” he said quickly. “Good to meet you. See you around, Eugene.”

“See you,” Sledge said with a frown.

Leckie turned and walked back toward the reception. The Sledge brothers weren’t following him—they were walking back down the path Eugene had indicated, cutting through the woods back to their parents’ house. Leckie couldn’t help but feel deflated. It had been a hell of a week, and he wasn’t sure if this weekend had actually helped or just made everything worse. He dropped into an empty seat and yanked irritably at the buttons at his collar. This uniform was too damn hot.

He had been sitting alone for five minutes when Runner plopped down next to him and dropped two small dessert plates on the table. There were several desserts at this wedding, including lemon cake, strawberry pie, and…

“Fuck you,” Leckie snorted, pushing the plate of angel food cake, whipped cream, and peaches back at him.

“More for me,” Runner shrugged, stuffing a generous bite in his mouth. “You know, I think this counts as a fancy dress ball.”

“It’s a wedding, not a ball.”

“Still. Should’ve let me be your date, Leckie,” he said with a mournful sigh. “Look at this. Chuckler’s dance card’s been full all night, Hoosier’s been drunk and chatting with the bartender for two hours, and Vera…”

“Bud. Shut up.”

“Yeah, okay.”

They sat in silence as Runner polished off a portion of the peach shortcake. He set the plate aside and reached for the second one. He speared a single peach slice and let out an exaggerated hum of satisfaction as he chewed.

“Fuck you,” Leckie repeated, and he snatched the plate back.

“Whatever you say, Peaches.”


	3. I don't know you, but I want you

**August, 1946**

“Robert, you’ve got a letter,” his mother said when Leckie sat down at the breakfast table. “Do you know anyone from Alabama?”

She held up an envelope and shook it impatiently when he didn’t take it right away. Leckie picked up a cup of coffee first, and then accepted the letter so his mother could keep flipping through the pile.

“Well,” he said. “There’s my friend down in Mobile who got married last month.”

He tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but she wasn’t paying attention, so it didn’t seem to matter much. He took a sip from his mug and flipped the envelope over so he could read the return address—and slowly he set the coffee on the tale.

“You know what,” he said. “I, uh. I’m not very hungry. I think I’m going to head into the office.”

“Well you’ve got to eat something!” his mother protested, but Leckie took one last sip and stood, stuffing the letter into the breast pocket of his jacket.

“I’m not going to starve,” he said, impatient with her fussing, and swung his jacket around his shoulders. “I think I’ve still got a couple of k-rations bouncing around in my briefcase.”

“Of _what_?” his father demanded, bending the top of the paper back, but Leckie was already out the door.

He thought about opening the letter right then and there and reading it on his walk to the bus stop, but in the end he decided against it. If he was going to be reading and walking, he ought to decide how much he cared about what it might say. In the end, Leckie got on the bus and rode it all the way into the center of town without taking the letter of out his pocket, trying not to think about it too much.

He didn’t go right to the office. Instead he went to the one bagel place in town, a tiny little ramshackle shop that looked like it had wandered out of New York accidentally. There were three formica tables tucked in the corner that were nearly always empty, and the only section of the storefront that was properly lit was the display case. Every ten minutes or so a baker would emerge from the basement, musclebound arms bearing an enormous tray of bagels, still steaming, to be dumped into the display and immediately snatched up by the diminutive woman at the register and pressed into the hands of a waiting customer. Each transaction took, on average, forty-two seconds; Leckie amused himself by keeping track during bouts of writer’s block. It was a good place to write, this little corner with its air of both vibrancy and anonymity.

This morning he accepted his pumpernickel bagel and a small paper cup of strong coffee, and sat down in one of the two empty booths. He took a bite of his bagel and removed the letter from his pocket, turning it over in his hands for a minute of silent contemplation.

“Let’s see what you’ve got, Scarlett,” he muttered to himself, and he carefully pried the envelope open. The letter inside was written on nice note paper, very different from the onionskin typewriter sheets Leckie used at work every day, and Sledge had neat, square handwriting.

_Dear Leckie,_

_I’ll start by apologizing for my conduct at the wedding. I was out of line and you were very decent in your response. A lot of men would not have been so patient, I know that, and I really do feel bad. I won’t embarrass you by going over the details, but I want you to know I don’t take it for granted._

_Having said that, I wanted to ask if you might be able to forget (or at least overlook) my behavior and go on being friends. I did enjoy your company at the wedding, and our conversation from before that. I think we might have a lot in common, aside from just being friends of Sid’s, and I’d very much like to keep in touch._

_Please write back soon, no matter what you say. With the town’s biggest hell-raiser safely hitched to everyone’s favorite crush, Mobile is a bit of a dull place nowadays._

_Yours truly,_

_Eugene Sledge_

_P.S. If you’re not inclined to forgive me just yet, I’ll appeal to the librarian side of you and remind you that “the quality of mercy is not strained…”_

Leckie read the letter through once, chuckling at the postscript, and then he set it down on the table and stared down at it for a long time, propping up his head with one hand. He was trying to figure out what to do next.

It would be easier if Sledge was more embarrassed. No matter what, Leckie had expected the letter to contain some kind of apology—the only question was how shameful the apology would be. A likely option was “sorry I was so incredibly drunk that I had no idea what I was doing,” the one that was too afraid to even point in the direction of what had actually happened. A more moderate one, and easiest to deal with, would have been “I’m so frightfully embarrassed that I think we should never speak of this again—in fact, let’s never speak again at all, shall we?”

This letter was… remarkably composed. There seemed to be very little embarrassment about the fact that Sledge had made a pass at Leckie, only that he had done so in such a sloppy fashion. And then the offer of friendship! He hadn’t expected at all.

By the time he finished his coffee, Leckie had reached a conclusion: that he was in a very awkward position.

\---

“Goddamnit,” Leckie muttered. He jammed his finger onto the backspace key three times and stamped three black x’s over his error. It seemed to him that the x’s were thicker and darker than any other letters on the page, and he sat in silent censure before them.

 _I know, I know,_ he thought gloomily. _Three strikes…_

And these weren’t even his first errors. He frowned at the typewritten sheet; he had made two other mistakes, in just three hundred words. The others weren’t x’d out—he had marked them in pencil, hoping he could white them out later and pass a clean copy to his editor—but this was too much. He stripped the sheet out of the typewriter, intending to start over.

“Golly, Bobby, not a good day for you, huh?”

“You know, Cindy, I think you’d make a great investigative reporter,” Leckie said with a sigh. He ruffled his hair and rallied his spirits to address the grinning blonde at the desk paired with his. “Ever think of going into muck-raking?”

“Who said anything about _muck_? I was just thinking maybe you had a bad night’s sleep or somethin’.” She leaned forward, her steel-grey eyes gleaming with an impish light. “But if we’re talking about _muck_ there must be a dame involved, huh? Who is it?”

“There’s no girl,” Leckie said firmly. It was true enough. “It’s just—never mind. It’s nothing. I’ve got work to do.”

“It’s not nothing that’s got you so worked up.” She pursed her pink-lipsticked lips and considered him for a moment. “If it’s not a girl, it’s gotta be family.”

Leckie groaned and deliberately directed his eyes to the new sheet of paper in his typewriter, but Cindy was not deterred.

“Who is it? Your old man? Your mom? Joe? Helen? Fannie?”

“Okay, you can’t keep this up,” Leckie said, looking up again. “You don’t know _all_ my sisters.”

“Sure I do. Now is it Gladys, or Peggy—”

“I don’t have a sister named Peggy.”

“Yes you do, I took a message from her on the phone once.”

“Peggy Leckie? Don’t be ridiculous.” Cindy frowned at him, narrowing her eyes, and Leckie let her steep in anticipation before allowing a smug grin to overtake his face. “Margo,” he corrected. “Margaret’s only ever gone by Margo, never Peggy.”

“Well _anyway_.”

“It’s not family,” he sighed, resting forward on his elbows. Most of the other staffers thought Cindy was something of a birdbrain, but Leckie liked her. For one thing, she had a great knack for knowing when to be persistent and when to prod for only a little while before shutting up. It was like having a sixth sister. “It’s—it’s a friend.”

“A girl friend,” Cindy pressed.

“Fine.” Leckie waved his hand. “Yes, a girl-space-friend. At one point… we were almost something else. But then I think we both realized that wasn’t a great idea.”

“Both?” she said shrewdly.

“It was a momentary thing,” Leckie insisted, hoping she couldn’t tell that his cheeks were burning. “For maybe _two_ days we thought we might step out together, but then I thought we shouldn’t, and she agreed with me. She doesn’t even live in New Jersey, so I doubt either of us were expecting a lifelong connection. But now she’s written me a letter.”

He paused, and Cindy held out her hand.

“I don’t have it with me,” he said quickly. He didn’t know if she believed him, but she accepted it.

“All right. Well what was in this letter?”

“She wants to be friends. Pen pals.”

Cindy comprehended the problem immediately.

“Hmmm. Well—do you want to be friends with her?”

Leckie flashed her an exasperated look and she frowned at him.

“I think we have a lot in common,” he said slowly. “I think she’s a great girl. But— I don’t know. We shouldn’t date. And if we keep talking, we might forget that.”

“Hmmm,” Cindy repeated. She rested her chin in her palm for a moment. She tapped her finger against her cheek rapidly, and then clapped her hands together and leaned forward. “I’ve got it. Bob, I’m going to give you some advice I try never to give any man, if I can help it: I think you should be one hundred percent honest.”

“Sage advice,” Leckie replied solemnly. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and fished around for his lighter. “To what do I own that honor?”

“Well, most men are pretty stupid, you know, at least when it comes to their own thoughts and feelings. They think they’re in love with girls who are completely wrong for them, and the girl they should be in love with they barely think about. And since they’re so dim, if I were to tell them to be honest, they would go ahead and say all the stupid things they think, and everything would be a helluva mess. But _you_ , Bob.” She tapped her temple. “You’re a _deep_ thinker.”

“Thanks,” he said, surprised.

“Which means if you don’t tell this girl everything, then you’ll just go on thinking yourself to death over it.”

“Thanks,” he repeated, somewhat less sincerely.

“You’re welcome. Can I have one of those?” He handed over a cigarette and his lighter, and Cindy stuck it between her lips. “Besides,” she said in a muffled voice. “You and me, we’re a lot alike. Charming, yaknow? If you don’t put this girl on her guard to start, she might go on falling in love with you, and that’s never a good idea. You know I wrote to three or four guys who were overseas? Lots of girls did. No harm in it, everybody said—keeping their spirits up and all. But I didn’t warn any of ’em, and you know what happened in the end? They all came home in January or February and I got marriage proposals from _three_. I felt awful.”

“How’d you decide who to pick?”

“Oh, none of them. It didn’t seem fair to choose.”

“Cindy,” Leckie laughed. “I don’t think we’re that much alike.”

“Oh no?” she said, raising an eyebrow in a way that threatened vengeance if she didn’t like his explanation.

“For one thing… I look terrible in shocking pink lipstick.”

Cindy snorted.

“Of course you do. Ruby is your color, Bob. _Obviously_.”

\---

For three days Leckie debated how to respond to Sledge’s letter, and then finally he decided he wasn’t going to come up with any solution better than Cindy’s. He reached the conclusion on his lunch break one day, and almost wrote a response then and there before deciding he didn’t want to write _anything_ in the office, especially not in an office where everyone thought themselves entitled to read everything you wrote without asking. He waited until he got home, instead, in his own room behind a closed door.

 _Dear Sledge,_ he wrote.

_Your apology is accepted. Under the influence of punch so thoroughly spiked, I doubt any man would be on his best behavior, and having been in a similar situation, I’m sympathetic. Besides, thinking back, I suspect you’re being overly kind with the “very decent” comment; I think I may have been more curt than the situation warranted. In any case I hope there are no hard feelings and that your hangover wasn’t too bad._

_I admit, I’ve been going back and forth over the second part of your letter. I don’t want to insult you; you seem like a perfectly good guy, and I also enjoyed our conversations. But, to be frank, I try to keep a pretty straightforward lifestyle, and that usually means that my encounters with a certain type of man are usually kept short. Do you understand? So I’m not sure how to move forward. I’d like to keep writing, but don’t know what to say, which is a very difficult thing for a writer to admit._

_Have you ever had a friendship like this before? I knew of a few fellows at Parris Island and overseas, but I don’t know if any of them could say the same of me. And you’ve met all the close friends I had in the Corps. I didn’t stray from my own group that much, so nobody was liable to confide in me, and really the only people I knew were the more obvious guys. (I’m sorry I’m being so vague, but growing up as the youngest of seven, I’m used to having people snoop through my mail. Better safe than sorry.)_

_If you’re willing to overlook my inexperience, then by all means keep writing. I could always use more literate, articulate, worldly friends, and if they happen to be marines, too, I won’t complain. If I’ve offended you, I can only apologize and say I suppose I’d understand if I didn’t get a response._

“For goodness’s sake, Robert!”

Leckie jumped as his mother opened the door, and hastily shoved the letter away from him, towards the unruly stack of papers at the back of his desk.

“Jesus, Ma, can’t you knock?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I said supper’s almost ready.”

“I’m _working_. I’ll be down in a minute.”

Her eyes narrowed on his typewriter, in its case by his feet.

“I didn’t hear that typewriter going.”

“It’s a rough draft, Ma. Are you my editor now?”

“Well, finish up. I made scalloped potatoes with ham, and if you’re not down in time I won’t save you any.”

She left with a swish of her skirts, and Leckie was grateful that his stomach didn’t growl until she was out of earshot. Scalloped potatoes were his favorite. He scrawled a hasty _Regards, Robert Leckie_ at the bottom of his letter and rustled around for a stamp and Sledge’s letter while waiting for the ink to dry. He copied the address down and folded the letter before he could second-guess himself. On his way into dinner he ducked outside and popped the letter in the mailbox before going into the dining room, and resolved not to think about it again until he got a reply.

\---

Sledge’s response came a few days later, thankfully in the afternoon mail, so Leckie was the first one to get his hands on it. He took it into the backyard instead of squirreling away in his room or leaving the house. The recent heat wave had dissipated and he wanted to enjoy the welcome summer breeze—and besides, he didn’t want to get too secretive about Sledge’s letters. If he exerted a lot of effort into trying to hide them, he would start assigning them more importance than they had. They were innocent letters from a friend, nothing more.

Well. Assuming this letter said something other than _Thanks for wasting my time_.

There was a wrought iron bench in his mother’s garden, conveniently planted beside a tall fern that filtered the bright afternoon sunshine. Leckie sat down and tore open the envelope, heart pounding with an eagerness he tried to ignore.

_Dear Leckie,_

_I can’t fault you for your honesty. I understand where you’re coming from, although I don’t have as many reservations as you; I think we’ve had very different experiences. In answer to your question, yes, I have met several men like us, mostly while I was in the Marines. I met three during boot camp, and two in my unit. My C.O. and his lieutenant were also very close, and I happen to know they were closer than most people realized. All told, seven men, which seems like a lot now that I’m counting them up._

_I would say, though, that I wasn’t intimate with most of these men, especially not those I met in training. They approached me, guessing that I was one of their kind I suppose, but at the time I was too nervous, and kept my distance. I’m still in touch with one of them, although he was transferred to another unit; one, I never really knew so I didn’t keep track of him, and one I heard was killed on Peleliu. I was closer to the men I was in combat with. Of that group, two—the officers—were killed, also on Peleliu, and one I have lost touch with. The last is still a good friend._

_So overall I would say I’m very close with one fellow and fairly close with another. I haven’t met anybody in Mobile, though. As for how to be friends—I think you may be overthinking it. I’m not making any propositions, I assure you, especially not since I made such an ass of myself before. I think we can just go on being regular friends if you’d like. Talk about politics, sports, literature—that’s enough to start a friendship, isn’t it? All of my other friends are pretty different from each other. In some cases, we may have gotten along at first because we had something in common, but I don’t expect us to only talk about one thing forever. “That kind of man” is still just a man, when it comes down to it, isn’t he?_

Leckie exhaled quietly when he reached the end of the first page. He put the letter down in his lap and looked up, breathing deeply. The backyard looked just like it always did, hazy and chartreuse in the sun, and it helped steady the racing of his heart. This was normal. This was— _normal_. Sledge’s letter was written in such a plain, sensible tone that he found himself agreeing with it automatically, setting aside the arguments he had been making in his head for seven years. They were logical arguments, he knew, otherwise he wouldn’t have clung to them so hard… but something in him was eager to grasp at Sledge’s logic instead. He liked it better.

Once he got his breath and his heartbeat under control, Leckie picked up the second page of the letter. This was even more normal—a breezy introduction to Sledge’s general thoughts on politics, sports, and literature, along with a few short anecdotes about his family to round out the picture. It was nothing overly intimate, not yet, just enough to establish a beginning. Leckie wondered if he should wait a day or two to respond, to keep things casual, and then decided that he didn’t have the patience. He pulled his briefcase up onto the bench, found a notebook and pen inside, and began his reply.

\---

 _September 13_ _  
_ _Dear Lucky,_

_I’m sorry for the delay in responding to your last letter, especially since you’re always so quick to answer mine. I’ve been busy lately because I’ve officially started my classes at Alabama Polytechnic Institute (hereafter referred to as ‘school’ or ‘Bama Poly’ for short). It’s all right so far. My entering class is the largest they’ve had in years, so all the dorms are full and so are all the men’s boarding houses in town. I’m in a boarding house with 20 other guys. If it weren’t for bootcamp I would say it was loud and cramped, but who am I to complain? I have my own bedroom with a door that locks. What luxury!_

_Sid is at Bama Poly, too. You probably already knew that. He started last spring, so he’s ahead of me, and he and Mary are in a married students’ apartment building just around the block. It’s funny—I’ve spent more time with Mary these first few weeks than with Sid. He has all his own friends already. He’s introduced me to some of them, but… I suppose I’ll adjust. At the moment I’m feeling very tired and just learning the ropes, and not at all interested in playing hangers-on with a group of guys I don’t know. Mary visited Sid once last spring, but she’s never lived in Auburn (that’s the town) before, so a few times when Sid was with his friends, Mary and I went exploring. She has a part-time job at the local doctor’s office to keep busy, and we found some nice haunts around town._

_I’m taking four classes: Introduction to Biology, Intro to Zoology, Latin, and English Literature I. So far my classes are interesting enough. I’ve included the booklist for my English class—feel free to critique it at your leisure. Have you ever thought about going to college? There are lots of schools in your neck of the woods to choose from, aren’t there? A lot of the fellows in my class are here on the GI Bill, unsurprisingly. But I haven’t met any other marines yet. It’s strange being back at school. College is different than high school, of course, but I can’t help but feel a bit like a kid again, and I had thought I had pretty well grown past that._

_At the same time.... I don’t want to complain. I feel like I’m being untoward if I say this, because after all I was only in the Corps for a little less than two years, so I’m hardly the Old Breed myself. But God, sometimes among these people, I feel like I’m a seasoned vet, like my old Gunny. Have you had much to do with other veterans since you got back, other than the ones you served with? Because it seems to me that over half of these fellows barely had a war at all! A whole bunch of them at Bama Poly never saw combat, and of those who did, many of them only saw it, and from quite a distance. They were with the Seabees or the Supply Corps, or they landed in a staging area just before the war ended and had a few months of occupation duty. _

_It seems like every time I think I’m getting over the war, it comes right back. It makes me angry. I try to set aside the anger but—there’s a fellow in my boarding house who was a Seabee and he ended up with a Jap flag somehow. (Bought it off a marine, I’ll bet you anything, though he won’t admit it.) A bunch of us were standing around when we first moved in, chatting in the doorway of this fellow’s room, and he was unpacking, and he took out the flag so everyone could admire it. He started to hang it up on his wall—a conversation starter, I guess he thought it was—and I just saw red. I said “What the hell are you doing?” He said he didn’t bring the flag home to hide it in the closet, and why shouldn’t he put it up if he wants? Well, I told him “I fought the goddamn war so that flag would never fly on American soil again, and here you are putting it up!”_

_They all looked at me like I was crazy. I felt a little crazy. I sort of mumbled an apology and I left—but, Leckie, am I wrong? It’s September of 1946. I’ve been out of the Marines for seven months, at peace for twelve months. And everyone here acts like the war was five years ago, ten, like it’s ancient history. Even my friends who were in combat don’t want to talk about it. They’re pretending nothing’s changed, when I feel like I’m a completely different person than I was before._

_I’m sorry for all this. I didn’t mean to write so much about something so serious. And maybe you agree with everyone else. Maybe you don’t want to talk about it, either. But I can’t help but feel that you understand better than most. My next letter will be more cheerful, I promise._

_Your servant,_

_Eugene Sledge_

 

_Sept. 17th_

_Dear Eugene,_

_I’ve included an annotated version of your book list. I tried to explain my reasoning to the best of my ability. I admit that starting with The Canterbury Tales is enough to soften me up. I harbor a fondness for Chaucer, because in high school I was the best in my class at understanding the Middle English, and I loved lording it over some of my more arrogant classmates. You know the kind I mean, the kind with Old Money fathers and a few dozen athletic prizes to their names. We don’t have as many Old Money families in my part of the world as yours, but there were still a few, or at least some who acted like it._

_Unfortunately not all the works on the list are equally admirable, and one or two I’ve had to cross out entirely. There is never any good reason to read Dickens. The list is also fairly outdated, although I’m assuming that’s because you said it’s English Lit I, implying at least a II. Well, I’ve added one or two suggestions of more modern authors, some of whom you may already be familiar with, and some unlikely to be taught in a classroom, I’ll bet. The ones least likely to be covered are, of course, the most interesting, particularly to you. W.H. Auden is one of the best poets publishing at the moment, in my opinion. He released a collected volume just last year—I had a nurse buy it for me when I was in the hospital—which I highly recommend. (When you find it, be sure to note the dedication.) I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it, but I really enjoy classic works—real Classic stuff, I mean, Homer and Virgil and the like—so my favorite poem of Auden’s is “The Fall of Rome,” even more so since my bit in the war. “The muscle-bound Marines mutiny for food and pay”!_

_I can’t say I’ve ever thought about going to college, myself. When I was in high school there wasn’t the money, and I was able to get a job I enjoyed with the Record pretty quickly. Even now I can’t say I’m really tempted. I wouldn’t mind taking a class or two; sitting around arguing literature or politics with intelligent people is something I find enjoyable. But I don’t think carving out four years of my life to do homework is a worthwhile use of my time, not when I’m already doing something I love without a degree. A reporter’s got to keep his wits sharp, but he should also make sure he’s keeping up to date with the real world, not getting buried in studies. Of course, you said you had no idea of what career you might want to pursue, so it’s different for you. And I imagine any career that can be obtained by taking Biology and Zoology classes requires a college degree, anyway._

_I hope you’re enjoying your new town. It must be different living there when you’ve spent most of your peacetime life in Mobile. I live in a small town, but being so close to New York I have experience in the big city, too. They each have their advantages and disadvantages; the small town is by far the better for quiet study and reflection. I say don’t worry about making new friends just yet. You’re charming enough to have no difficulty in that area once you start trying, and with so much happening at once why bother putting too much energy into it right away?_

_As for the rest… I do understand, I think. The thing that bothers me the most is when people argue what the war was “for.” When I first came home, my brother tried to say that we hadn’t fought the war “for” the steelworkers who were on strike, and that irritated me to no end, because we didn’t fight it “for” the bosses, either, did we? Before the war began, I thought it was all about ideals. I thought it was about defeating the human face of evil on earth, the Japanese Imperial Army and the Nazi regime, those two world powers that were tearing through humanity and leaving only misery in their wake. When it was over… I still felt it was a war of ideals. I felt that it had to be, because there was too much destruction for it to be about anything else. The dropping of the atomic bomb, I think, can only be justified if it was in defense of goodness; and if we did not defeat the Nazis to stop their purge of Europe, and the Japs theirs of Asia, then what else did we fight them for? If we weren’t fighting for those slaughtered in Nanking and Bergen-Belsen, then for whom? What possible motive for war is more compelling than to end the slaughter of millions of innocents? _

_Yet when I was on the front lines, I felt very differently. I think you and I both know war too well to say it’s a triumph of ideals; it’s dirty, cruel, senseless, infuriating, and in its own way as evil as any thing can be. When I was in the middle of it, I did not fight “for” anything except my own life. My own longing to be out of it, and to go back home, even though I didn’t always believe that was a thing I could achieve._

_You’re right, in a way. I am like everybody else. I try not to think about the war too often, because I think if I tried to hold these two concepts in my mind all the time, the horror of war and its necessity, I’d go insane. But I’m also like you. I’m always conscious of the fact that the man I am today is not the same I was five years ago. Sometimes I wish the people around me could tell, and sometimes I’m very glad they can’t._

_Don’t apologize for writing. When I say I try not to think about that the war, I don’t mean I’m always successful, and a shrink would probably say it’s better to talk things out than keep them bottled up. Not that I hold with shrinks, overall, but maybe they’re right. I’ve got to close now, because the mail is coming soon, but write again soon, won’t you? No matter what you write._

_Yours,_

_Bob_

_P.S. Fuck that moron with the flag._

\---

As the weeks passed, they continued to write more and longer letters. Soon Leckie found that he was writing as much to Sledge as he was to Chuckler, Runner, and Hoosier combined—although he assuaged his guilt by reminding himself that Hoosier was horrible at replying to letters, that Chuckler’s notes were always affectionate but brief, clearly dashed off with the same energy with which Chuckler did everything, and that Runner usually drove into New York City several times a year, so they would no doubt meet in person much more often than anyone else.

In any case, Leckie was no longer surprised to get thicker envelopes in the mail, as Sledge’s letters started to take up three or four sheets of paper. On the contrary, he was surprised one afternoon in late October when he slit open the side of the envelope and tipped out the contents to find only two modest pieces of notepaper—and something else, a smaller, thicker piece of paper that slipped through his fingers onto the carpet, that evidently could be blamed for the envelope’s weight. Leckie bent to pick it up, and realized it was a photo; on the back was the stamp of an Alabama studio and, in Sledge’s handwriting, the words “EBS, Mobile, 1946. Semper Fi.”

On the other side was a portrait of Sledge, wearing his dress blues. A smile touched Leckie’s lips. There were only two kinds of marines: those who were openly proud about their blues, and those who kept their pride secret. He had no doubt that Sledge was the second kind, not with an expression that serious. He set the photograph down on his desk and unfolded the letter, seeking confirmation. The first few paragraphs contained the usual kind of chatter, but about halfway down the page he found the information he was looking for.

_I sat for a portrait before I left Mobile. Honestly, when I got home I thought I’d never put on a uniform again; it seems to me getting all gussied up only helps convince people war is something it’s not. But my mother begged me to wear my dress blues just for this, and there didn’t seem to be much to gain by fighting with her. I’d never worn them before and I felt pretty stupid in them. Honestly, what kind of marine wears neat clothes, huh? Ratty dungarees or nothing, I say!_

_Anyway, she had the studio print up a good number and sent me a few of them, for friends. Do with it as you wish._

“Far too modest,” Leckie admonished, shaking his head. He set the letter down and picked up the photo again, holding it on each side by the white border. He hadn’t the faintest idea why he felt like giving the photo a thorough examination, except that it had been several months since he had last seen Sledge and he wanted to test his recollection.

The most obvious difference, of course, was that his auburn hair was missing, hidden by his cover and dulled by the black-and-white ink. The little patch of hair that poked out, just above his ear, was simply dark in the photo, and his white cover looked like an enormous deflated balloon on his head. Leckie had a serious bone to pick with whoever had designed the dress blue covers; the rest of the uniform was quite spiffy, but the headgear just ruined it. Luckily he had missed all the parades and whatnot, so on the few occasions he had had need to wear his dress blues, he had been able to spend most of his time indoors and bareheaded.

But other than that inevitable drawback… Sledge looked good. His uniform was tailored to him nicely, neither swallowing him up nor pulled too tight over any post-deployment softness his body had acquired, and his pose had an easy grace that was missing from other formal portraits Leckie had seen. He noticed, with a snort of laughter, that Sledge had a corporal’s chevrons on his sleeve, and marveled that the other man had yet to tease him about being outranked in over three months’ of friendship. That was remarkable restraint; Chuckler had started abusing his authority in about forty-five seconds.

His eyes returned to Sledge’s face, and there Leckie paused. It was a small photo, only four inches by six, and he wished that it was larger, or that the camera was focusing closer on his face. He wanted to see whether Sledge was happy.

He wasn’t smiling in the photo, but that was no indication one way or the other; it was a formal portrait and he looked very formal, very dignified. That could be all. Yet the longer Leckie looked, the more he was convinced that there was something forlorn about his face. He couldn’t make out any softening around Sledge’s mouth or any crinkles at the corner of his eye—just the straight lines of his mouth and eyebrows, and his eyes so dark that in the photo they looked black. He seemed… tired.

Leckie sighed. He relaxed back in his chair and stretched out his arm towards the only frame on his desk. In it was a snapshot of himself with his two youngest sisters, Fannie and Rose, at Rose’s high school graduation. It was a terrible picture, capturing him at the peak of pubescent misery, and he was more than happy to tuck the portrait of Sledge in front of the glass, blocking most of the original except a sliver of Fannie’s dress.

He kept all of Sledge’s letters in the middle drawer of his desk. He opened it now and picked through them, but he didn’t need to reread any of them. He knew, just by rifling through them, which was which, when he’d gotten them, and what passages he had lingered over. Shaking his head, Leckie shut the drawer, and pulled a fresh sheet of paper towards him. It was no use, poring over old letters. He would only overthink things. Better to write new ones and collect proof one way or the other.

 _Dear S.,_ he wrote with a smile, trusting Sledge to realize that the initial did not stand for his surname.

 _Thanks for the letter and the photo. There’s something about mothers and dress blues—well, I’m sure if I haven’t told you, Sid has. When we were on Guadalcanal, my father wrote me a letter saying my mother wanted to know if she should mail me my blues. It was a running joke in our company—possibly the whole battalion—for_ _years_ _afterwards. Then when I got home, she bugged me about not wearing them and said she thought I’d look handsome in them. I ended up taking her advice and wore them when I asked Vera out for the first time. So the whole thing can be blamed on the blues, I suppose._

_Anyway. I think you look handsome. Ratty dungarees may have their appeal, but there’s nothing wrong with appearing like a nice, clean-cut Southern gentleman when the occasion calls for it. You fill out the uniform very well—although I wouldn’t mind a snapshot featuring that lovely smile of yours. Think of it, the next time you, Sid, and Mary are out at a party or something. Do they have dances at Bama Poly? Homecoming, prom, winter weekend, the usual high school fetes?_

He added a few stories of his own high school dances, most of which had been uneventful at the time but became interesting later, with some self-deprecating embellishment, and then some of the usual updates. Briefly, he considered sending Sledge a photo in return, but he decided against it. He didn’t have a nice one on hand, and going to a portrait studio _just_ to have something to send to Sledge seemed… well, overstepping things, somehow.

Leckie forgot to put the letter in the mailbox the next day, but he sent it the day after. Sledge’s response was not as quick. At first Leckie didn’t notice; it was football season and his workload was heavier than normal. Then he brushed it off by reasoning that Eugene was probably busy with schoolwork. After eleven days, he started to wonder if he had said something offensive, and resolved that he would ring up Sledge’s boarding house by the end of the week—but before that deadline came, the letter arrived, late Friday morning. It was also a bit shorter than usual, but perfectly chatty, and his worry was relieved.

Until he read the postscript.

_P.S. I’ve gone back and forth on writing this, but in the end I thought it was better to be upfront. After what happened between us at the wedding, I would prefer if you not make jokes at my expense. About my looks or anything. I know I’m a fool for caring, but there you have it, my ego is more sensitive than it appears. Besides, we’d agreed these letters would just be normal letters between friends, and I’d rather not have reason to wonder._

“Jokes?” Leckie muttered aloud. He put the letter down, frowning and staring through the kitchen table as he tried to remember what he had written, exactly. He certainly hadn’t written any intentional jokes, aside from some light region-based teasing. Had he said anything that could come off as a joke?

He picked the letter up and read the postscript again, and then again, brow furrowed. _About my looks or anything… I’d rather not have reason to wonder…_

“Fuck!”

He slammed his palm down on the table and used it to propel himself out of his chair. He paced the room, turning back again and again and zeroing in on the small cream-colored rectangle in the middle of the of the table.

God damn it, this was why he hadn’t wanted to write to Sledge in the first place. He’d _told_ Cindy, right then at the beginning, that he was worried this might happen—that, despite any well-intentioned resolutions they agreed on, Sledge might still… might still…

Why was his heart racing?

“ _Shit_ ,” Leckie hissed. He dragged a hand down his face, then turned on his heel and fell onto the couch. “Shit,” he said again, shaking his head at the ceiling. He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw muzzle flashes, and then dropped his hands to the cushions and thought about Sledge.

By rights the first image that popped into his mind should be an approximation of the photo on his desk, the one he looked at every damn day of the week. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t even a memory of Mobile—his face, lit by bright sunlight, when he turned around outside the train station, or at the wedding. No.

The image that came to the forefront was Sledge’s face at the entrance to Leckie’s tent on Pavuvu, lit only by the faint efforts of a single lamp, surrounded by shadows. The sweet softness of his expression, open and honest in a way nothing ever was on Pavuvu. At the time he had ignored that look, certain that the Pacific would knock Sledge around the way it knocked everyone, but now…. Well, he couldn’t say that the Pacific hadn’t done a fair amount of damage. But when Leckie read through Sledge’s letters, full of not just bitterness but humor and thoughtfulness and _longing_ , they made his heart ache in a way he couldn’t ignore any longer.

“Shit,” he muttered for the third time, and then he sat straight up and turned towards the end table, where the telephone perched like an ogre on a delicate white doily. He dialled the number by rote and was briefly grateful that his parents were both out of the house; it would give him time to think of an excuse. “Hello, yes, I’d like to book a ticket. Mobile, Alabama, direct if you can manage it—departing Sunday morning or as near as you can get. That sounds perfect, thank you…”


	4. so impatient when you're not mine

**November, 1946**

It was evening when he arrived in Mobile, and night by the time the cabbie dropped him off at the end of the Sledges’ driveway.

“I’d take you to the door,” the cabbie said apologetically. “But I never had a fare to this _particular_ house before, and some of the folks in this neighborhood, they get awful picky about that kind of thing. Some of ’em don’t like cabs drivin’ all the way down. Sorry, and with it being winter and all...”

“Don’t worry about it,” Leckie said as he peeled a dollar from his billfold and fished two quarters from the pocket. He passed them up. “I just got in from Jersey, and up there the cabbies are ruder and the weather’s worse. Have a good night.”

He got out of the cab and started to stroll down the driveway. It was a long, curving path made of white gravel, and he found himself walking under enormous oak trees laden with moss. The house at the end wasn’t technically big enough to be called a plantation, but Leckie was hearing echoes of the Old South anyway. He stepped onto the front porch and remembered, with a wry grin, an evening very like this one, seven months prior. Oddly, he felt that the stakes were even higher, this time—he hadn’t known Eugene for as long as he had known Vera, but he knew him _better_.

Then there were the not-insignificant details that this porch was far grander and he didn’t have the aid of his dress blues, only a nice sweater vest, tie, and thick tweed coat, all somewhat rumpled from the train ride. He tugged at his clothes to try and get them in some semblance of order, and took a deep breath before raising the knocker on the door.

The door was open soon after, and Leckie was momentarily startled by the appearance of a colored woman wearing a maid’s uniform. They stared at each other with unequal composure before she raised her eyebrows and said, “Yes, sir?” Leckie cleared his throat.

“I, ah—I’m looking for Eugene. He is—he is home, isn’t he?” he asked, consumed with sudden horror at the thought that Sledge might still be at school in Auburn. Sledge had said it was only a three hour drive to Auburn from Mobile, which wouldn’t be terrible if Leckie hadn’t just traveled by train for twenty-three hours, booked a hotel room in Mobile, and showed up on his doorstep at eight o’clock in the evening.

“What name?” she asked politely.

“Robert Leckie.”

“Excuse me just a minute, sir.”

She closed the door and Leckie waited. The night wasn’t as cold here as it was in Jersey, but he was glad for his coat. The air felt heavy and hard, like leaning against an iron door. He wanted a cigarette, but when the door opened again he was glad he hadn’t lit one. The woman standing there must have been Sledge’s mother; he recognized her vaguely from the wedding. Her appearance brokered no nonsense, from the polished perfection of her hairstyle to the tips of her fashionable-yet-sensible shoes. The smile affixed to her face was polite but bemused.

“Ma’am,” he nodded. “I don’t believe we’ve met—I’m Robert Leckie.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Robert. My name is Mary Frank Sledge. I’m Eugene’s mother.” She gave his hand a firm shake and drew back, striking a defensive position in the doorway. “Are you a friend of his?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, relying on Marine Corps confidence to smooth over the doubt in his own mind. “We met briefly overseas and then again at Sid Phillips’s wedding, and we’ve exchanged a few letters. Sid and I served together in the Marines.”

He lobbed Sid’s name casually, and it met its mark. Mrs. Sledge softened.

“Sidney Phillips is a good man,” she acknowledged, tilting her chin up proudly like he was her own son. “He and Eugene have been friends since they were boys. Is he expecting you?”

“Oh no, I don’t think so. I’m in town for a few days and I thought I’d stop by and say hello.”

“That’s very kind of you. We—well, as a matter of fact we were just sitting down to supper.”

“Oh, ma’am, I do apologize,” Leckie said in his most humble voice. “I don’t mean to interrupt your evening. I can come back at a better time.”

He tilted his body, as if he meant to step off the porch, and this little bit of humility won out.

“Not at all,” Mrs. Sledge said courteously, with a smile that was just a little bit warmer than politeness called for. “We’ll set a place for you—have you eaten yet?”

“I had something from the cart on the train a while ago. If you’re sure it’s no trouble…”

Mrs. Sledge assured him again that it wasn’t, and ushered him into the house. Leckie dropped some of the subservient act—he couldn’t keep that one up too long—and surveyed his surroundings. He resisted the urge to whistle. If the Phillipses were doing okay, the Sledges were living quite comfortably. It wasn’t an ostentatious house, but there were little indications of wealth scattered all throughout—a new radio, antique furniture well-maintained, a servants’ stair tucked away in a corner.

Leckie stopped abruptly at the entrance to the dining room, startled by the scene. The three men at the table were all wearing suits and sitting in front of china plates. The perfectly-coiffed blonde woman at the table was the only one who didn’t look up at Leckie’s entrance; her eyes were fixed on the covered porcelain bowl in the hands of another Negro servant, a middle-aged man in a white suit and black tie. Leckie figured he had stumbled into some kind of celebration, and was about to break into another round of apologies when he caught sight of Eugene, who met his gaze, turned red, and… well. He didn’t smile, exactly, but his eyes widened and he leaned forward just a hair’s breadth in a state of hopeful expectation, and butterflies fluttered in Leckie’s stomach.

He managed to wrench his gaze away and look at Mrs. Sledge politely as she explained the situation, but he barely heard a word of what she said. Whatever it was, it earned him a round of greetings from the table, although one in particular caught his attention more than the others.

“How’re you doing, Leckie?” Sledge asked, holding out a hand, and Leckie shook it as naturally as he could.

“Doing just fine, thanks.”

Eugene’s father stood, too, and strode across the table. He was an older man—gentleman, Leckie corrected in his head with a private smile. He had a neatly trimmed white moustache, small round glasses, and a bow tie. Definitely a gentleman.

“Edward Sledge,” he introduced himself. “I do believe I’ve heard your name before—very good to have you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He traded handshakes with Edward Junior, who couldn’t resist a grin and a wink, and the blonde woman, who introduced herself as his wife, Martha. Then the ritual was over, he glanced at his hostess.

“Robert, why don’t you sit right there by Eugene?” Mrs. Sledge indicated as she sat at the end of the table. “Or, excuse me, would you prefer Corporal Leckie?”

“Oh, Bob is fine, ma’am. And as a matter of fact it’s private first class,” he corrected with a wry grin. He didn’t look at Sledge as he sat down, trying to play it casual. “I’m afraid I got tossed in the brig just a few too many times to make rank, which in my humble opinion is the mark of a true marine.”

Sledge snorted, and Leckie tried to elbow him as subtly as he could.

“How so?” Dr. Sledge asked with an indulgent smile.

“Oh, I don’t mean I was a scapegrace by any means. It’s just my belief that any red-blooded young man with a little bit of spirit is bound to rub up against the restrictions of the Marine Corps at some point in time. Shirking duties is one thing, but sneaking out of camp a little here, liberating some Army supplies there—it demonstrates courage and innovation in a way that I find, personally, to be true to the ideal of American independence.”

A round of laughter greeted this pronouncement, although Mrs. Sledge still seemed unsure of how to react, and Eugene rolled his eyes.

“Leckie likes to hear himself talk,” he said to the table, sopping up the remains of the soup course with a crust of bread. “You’ve got to get ahold of the reins or he’ll start thinking of himself as a philosopher.”

They all chuckled again, and Mrs. Sledge cracked a smile. She also cleared her throat, and Eugene dropped his bread and put his hands in his lap. No one else seemed to notice; Dr. Sledge turned to the manservant and asked him to serve the next course. For a moment, everyone was distracted, and Leckie took the opportunity to bend down and speak into Eugene’s ear.

“Silver service on a weeknight?” he asked in a low voice.

“Remember to use silverware,” Sledge replied solemnly. “And if we’re lucky, there won’t even be worms in it.” They smiled at each other, sharing the joke, and then Eugene’s expression flickered. “Leckie,” he muttered. “What are you doing down here?”

“So, Bob,” Edward said cheerfully, and Leckie sat up straight. “What do you do, now that the war’s over? I’m assuming you’ve left the Marine Corps?”

“I did,” Leckie confirmed. The colored woman appeared at his elbow with a place setting and arranged it in front of him, and filled his water glass from a crystal decanter on the table. He thanked her quietly and took a sip before resuming the conversation. “I was off the line for the last few months anyway, in the hospital, so I got out a little sooner than Eugene did, I think. I’m a reporter, with the Bergen County Record back home in Jersey.”

He continued to field questions as the next course was brought in, mostly about his town, his job, and his family. It occurred to Leckie that the last time he had been subject to this kind of polite interrogation was at the Karamalis household, and the thought made him smile. He wouldn’t have said that Jersey was as foreign to Alabama as it was to Australia, but the metaphor wasn’t bad. Eugene was quiet. He didn’t ask any questions himself, although he kept a close watch over the conversation, and more than once Leckie felt the back of his neck prickle and was sure that the other man was staring. Finally Mrs. Sledge noticed that he had been talking so much he had barely touched his chicken, and chastised everyone for monopolizing his time. The conversation was then passed to Edward and Martha, who evidently were toying with the idea of either buying or building a house, and Leckie was left to enjoy his meal. There was a lull soon afterwards, and he was able to address Eugene.

“It’s lucky I caught you. I wasn’t sure if you would be back from school yet—do they give you the full week off for the holiday?”

“Yes,” Sledge nodded. “My father picked me up Saturday. Sid and Mary are staying in Auburn until tomorrow, though.”

“And where are you in your book list?” he asked with a smile.

“Keats,” Sledge grinned. “Not your favorite, I know.”

“I have no beef with Keats,” Leckie protested. “His writing is beautiful—beautiful. I just have very little interest in reading poetry that complex about the harvest and stars and whatnot.”

“Well, I like it. I was just reading ‘To Autumn’ this afternoon. It would have been nicer to read a month ago, maybe, but still, it’s a great poem.”

“Father, are you planning on bringing Eugene to the office while he’s home?” Mrs. Sledge asked suddenly, with a meaningful look at her husband, and her son sighed.

“My father is a doctor,” he said to Leckie. “My mother, having been forced to give up her plans on making me a banker, now thinks that will do.”

A rumble of chuckles rolled around the table and Mrs. Sledge made a wordless noise of fond protest.

“Should’ve been a corpsman, Gene,” Leckie shook his head in mock disapproval. “Gotten a leg up.”

“Bury me with a stovepipe in my hand,” Sledge said with a smile, sipping from his glass of iced tea.

The rest of the dinner passed like that. Every once in a while they got in one or two private words, but mostly they talked at each other in the midst of the group, which was… Leckie didn’t know what it was. On the one hand, he was having a hard time concealing his delight at their easy back-and-forth. He couldn’t deny that this was his favorite kind of flirtation, and even the constant awareness that he had to tone it down, just in case, couldn’t dampen his spirits.

The suspense, though. The suspense might kill him.

As they stripped the chicken to its bones, the servants brought in a few more side dishes, and after almost forty minutes, the main course was cleared away and replaced with fruit, coffee, and sweet potato cake. Leckie’s leg started jiggling under the table.

The moment chairs started pushing back from the table, Leckie’s gaze zeroed in on Sledge. His head moved slightly side to side.

“Coffee and cards,” he said in an undertone. Leckie wasn’t sure if he was able to keep his groan inside, but luckily at the same moment Mrs. Sledge suggested, in a carrying voice, that they retire to the drawing room for more coffee “and perhaps a game of bridge.”

Leckie followed the crowd to one of the living rooms he had passed on the way in. Rosa was already there with a silver coffee tray. Everyone accepted a cup, and there was some debate about bridge partners. Leckie was able to plead mental exhaustion from his trip, and Eugene, with more grace, bowed out on the basis of allowing the married couples to test their wits.

Dean set up a card table in the center of the room, and the four players descended. Sledge and Leckie watched, from opposite sides of the parlor, as the cards were dealt and the bidding went around. Leckie sipped from his coffee and tried not to grimace. It had so much milk stirred in that the coffee had gone tepid, and he hadn’t been able to stomach that much sugar in a single cup since Guadalcanal. He began to inch his way around the room, and in the process discarded his cup on a convenient table.

His goal was to get to Eugene before someone became dummy, because then they ran the risk that the dummy would leave the game and join their conversation. He was determined to have a minute of uninterrupted conversation with Sledge before the night was over. It was the least he could aspire to after twenty hours on a train.

He managed to get to the sofa while the bidding was still going around. He leaned against the arm of the sofa and bent down to say something clever, but before he could manage Sledge flashed him a disapproving look.

“Who decided to let a jarhead like you in polite society, huh?” he asked in an undertone, looking pointedly at Leckie’s makeshift seat.

Leckie rolled his eyes.

“Fine, scooch over.”

“Why should I?” Sledge asked.

Leckie was a natural born smartass, as were most of his friends. He could tell Sledge was an amateur at the game, because he couldn’t suppress the grin that crept onto his face, but Leckie found it endearing. He stood and gave Sledge an elaborate bow before walking around the back of the sofa and taking a seat on his other side. He leaned over to speak, and again was cut off before a word could pass his lips—stopped, this time, by his own senses.

Sledge had put on a dash of cologne before supper, but not very much—or perhaps he had put it on earlier in the day and the scent had faded. In any case, there was only enough to catch Leckie’s attention, not enough to obscure the other smells clinging to his skin and his clothes. He had been out walking during the day, long enough to work out a light sweat that still lingered in the thin cotton of his button-down shirt.

Over all of that was—autumn. Leckie didn’t know how to parse the smell of autumn, whether it was really the scent of dead leaves or the earth when it was stiff and unyielding, or the wind itself, but it was the same in Alabama as it was in New Jersey. It was unexpected in this cramped little sitting room stuffed with finery. And something about it shook the rest of his senses, made him imagine he could still feel the cold radiating off Sledge’s skin, that the barest flush of his cheeks was from the stinging wind rather than the warm room. That if he reached out to touch his cheek it would be as cool the porcelain it resembled.

He wouldn’t even have to reach that much. If he inclined his head just a little bit more he could touch his lips to the lower part of Sledge’s face, just above his jaw.

Sledge was waiting. Leckie couldn’t think of a single clever thing to say.

“I want you,” he managed finally, in a strained murmur that couldn’t be heard by the players at the table, and a shiver passed over Eugene’s face.

“You’ve got some nerve, Leckie,” he said in a soft voice.

“I know.”

Sledge finished his coffee and set the cup on the side table. He stood and cleared his throat.

“Would y’all mind if Bob and I went into town?” he asked. The bridge players looked up. “We haven’t seen each other since the wedding; I think we’re going down to Johnson’s to grab a drink and catch up.”

“You’re welcome to take a bottle of something into your father’s study,” Mrs. Sledge piped up. “As a matter of fact, there’s a bottle of bourbon in there already, isn’t there, Father?”

“For purely medicinal purposes only, I assure you, my dear,” the good doctor said virtuously, to a round of chuckles.

“Well, I’m not sure how late we’ll stay up—wouldn’t want to disturb anybody,” Sledge said when that died down. “We’d better go into town.”

“All right,” Mrs. Sledge said, with just a hint of disapproval in her voice. “Well, why don’t you take the car? That way you won’t have to worry about getting a cab at this time of night, and you’ll come back sober, Eugene Bondurant.”

“Yes ma’am,” Sledge promised solemnly while Leckie bit his lip so hard he knew he’d feel it all night and the next day, too—but at least he didn’t let out the cackle that threatened to burst out. _Bondurant_?

He managed to keep his features locked in a rigid mask of politeness, and thanked the family profusely for their hospitality before he and Eugene left their company.

They were silent as they left the drawing room, then the house, and then the grounds altogether, Leckie in the passenger seat of the Sledges’ Ford 7Y. The night had gotten darker, and colder, and they passed no one on the road. Sledge waited until the house had faded away in the rearview mirror, and then he pulled over on the side of the road and threw it in park.

“What the _hell_ are you doing here, Leckie?” he demanded.

“I wanted to see you,” Leckie said simply. Sledge was staring at him like he was an idiot.

“You’re kidding me. You came all the way down to Alabama, with no warning, just for that?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” Leckie persisted. “Face to face. Your last letter, the postscript—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Sledge interrupted. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and his cheeks turned red. “I _knew_ I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It wasn’t just that. It was—” Leckie paused. He was going to bring up Sledge’s other letters, the ones that hadn’t directly alluded to any issues yet still gave him the impression of general unhappiness, but at the last moment he decided to switch course. _I came down here because you seemed pathetic_ just didn’t sound good, even if he did emphasize that he meant it in the Greek sense. “I kept thinking about the wedding,” he said instead. “And that letter you wrote to me, the first—no, the second one. You…”

It was so close in the car. He had to tear his eyes away from Sledge’s, and he looked out of the windshield and took a deep breath.

“I’d told you I never associated with—queers.”

“Gays,” Sledge said quietly.

“Right. It was never something I let myself think about. Sex with strangers, every once in a while, that was fine, as long as it was _once_. But then your letter, you were so casual about everything, and just hearing that, reading it, something changed. If you could be okay with it, then so could I. And I can’t help but think that part of what happened at the wedding was me being an ass. I didn’t want to get over-involved. Even afterwards, I didn’t want to think I could get to know you and also…”

He trailed off again, and gave a little embarrassed cough.

“Well?” Sledge prompted. His voice was serious, and Leckie couldn’t tell if that was a hint of a smirk on his face or just a trick of the shadows.

“I don’t want to presume,” he said with a boyish grin.

“But that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?” Sledge asked bluntly. Jesus, Leckie's cheeks felt hot.

“It’s part of it,” he admitted.

Sledge sat there for a moment without saying anything. Then he looked out the front windshield again and put the car in gear.

“Did you book a hotel room when you got here?” he asked. “Or did you just hop on a train without any luggage?”

“I got a room,” Leckie said, mouth going dry. “Same hotel.”

“Good.” They drove in silence for a few more minutes. “I wouldn’t have said I was all that confident,” Sledge said quietly. “You seem to think I was braver than I was. Hell, I still haven’t… if I was that braver, I wouldn’t have had to get drunk, wouldn’t I?”

“Guess not.” Leckie rolled his head to the side and smiled. “Maybe between the two of us we’ll cobble together enough confidence to make one really brave man.”

“Or maybe that’s the problem,” Sledge said, returning the smile. “We’ve got to stop thinking like men and get back to thinking like marines.”

\---

The drive into Mobile was quick. They briefly debated stopping by Johnson’s, just to say they did, but then decided against it, although neither of them named the restless energy that drove their decision. They greeted the hotel clerk—he, too, knew Sledge’s family, this time because of some society of his mother’s—and hastened to Leckie’s room. Luckily there were few guests in the hall, and Leckie was able to keep his composure as he unlocked the door and walked through.

He realized Sledge wasn’t following him and looked over his shoulder to see the redhead hesitating on the threshold.

“You coming in?” he asked.

“Yes,” Sledge said quickly, but still he paused for another second before propelling his body over the threshold, breezing right past Leckie and stripping off his coat as though he had all the confidence in the world. As he passed, Leckie reached out and grabbed his forearm.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Leckie drew a flask from his breast pocket and shook it.

“One sip?” he offered with a smile. “Bit of liquid courage?”

Sledge looked at the flask, then at Leckie. With little fanfare but absolute surety, he took the flask from Leckie’s hand and tossed it on the bed. He touched his hand to Leckie’s jaw.

They stood there silently as the moment stretched on, looking at each other. Leckie wrapped a hand around Sledge’s wrist, not trying to move his hand away, just wanting to touch him in return. It was hard to believe they were alone like this. The last time they’d seen each other, they’d hardly known each other. And now… Leckie’s lips twitched up in a grin, and an answering smile spread across Sledge’s face. Leckie tilted his head forward and touched their foreheads.

“Hey,” he murmured.

“Hi.”

They moved at the same time, Leckie bending his neck, Sledge surging up to meet him, and their lips met in the kind of kiss that knocked them back and took their breaths away. Sledge’s hand moved to the back of Leckie’s head, holding him firmly in place, and Leckie groaned and parted his lips. His hands dropped down to Sledge’s hips and he leaned forward eagerly, bending Sledge backward until they both broke away, gulping in harsh breaths.

“Jesus,” Leckie hissed. He had meant to take things slow, but without thinking about it his hands were moving, palms flat against Sledge’s ass, and he couldn’t stop kissing him, darting in to suck at his upper lip and swaying back when the other man tried to capture him in a real kiss. “Who taught you how to kiss like that, huh, Scarlett?”

He nipped at Sledge’s lower lip and allowed himself to be kissed properly again, although a rumble of laughter passed between their lips.

“You don’t really want me to answer that, do you?” Sledge said breathlessly, wrapping his arms around Leckie’s neck and lifting up on his toes. They stumbled, off balance, and Sledge bumped into the footboard of the bed; Leckie braced himself against it with one arm.

“Sure I do,” he insisted, breaking off and burying his face in Sledge’s neck, tugging uselessly at his collar to expose more skin. “You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how,” he quoted.

“Oh my god,” Sledge laughed, leaning away, but Leckie followed him and nibbled on the corner of his jaw, grinning to himself.

“I’m just trying to make sure you’re getting everything you deserve.”

The words came out with more gentleness than he had intended and for a minute Sledge stared at him again and Leckie held his breath, hoping he hadn’t ruined everything. Then Sledge touched his face again, thumb brushing against his lips, and Leckie turned his head to kiss his fingertips.

“Well then stop asking stupid questions and start making sure,” he said in a rough voice, and Leckie obeyed. He ran his hand through Sledge’s hair as they kissed, and then ran his palm flat down his back, relishing the intimacy of muscles and vertebrae beneath his touch. It’d been a long time since he was this close to someone else like this. In the back of his mind he wondered if he should be taking this slow, but before the thought could lodge too firmly he was untucking the back of Sledge’s shirt, eager to reach skin.

“Wait, wait,” Sledge said breathlessly. “I forgot to grab—do you have a condom?”

Leckie was pulled back to reality abruptly, and he blinked in puzzlement as he drew back and glanced at the floor, looking for his bag.

“Uh, yeah, I think I’ve got… what for?”

For a moment they stared at each other in mutual bewilderment, and then they both burst into giggles like teenagers caught doing something naughty, clutching each other’s arms so they didn’t collapse into a fit of laughter on the floor.

“I meant—” Leckie managed, trying to breathe. “I meant—”

“I know what you meant,” Sledge said, kissing him in between the last few giggles he couldn’t suppress. “It’s nothing personal, Bob, it’s just I heard about what y’all got up to in Australia and I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

“What’s Australia got to do with anything?” Leckie asked. “It’s not as if I’m going to give you VD.”

A nervous smile twitched on Sledge’s face and he cleared his throat.

“Well, like I said, it’s nothing personal—I don’t mean to cast aspersions, but…”

“I’m not _insulted_ , Eugene,” Leckie chuckled. “But you can’t get VD from a man, so unless you’re worried about getting pregnant I don’t think we need a condom.”

The nervousness dropped off of Sledge’s face; now the other man was looking at him like he was an idiot.

“Yes, you can.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Leckie, is your father a doctor?” he asked, suddenly exasperated, dropping down on the bed.

“Come on, that’s not an argument. That doesn’t make _you_ some medical expert—”

“And does your father, the doctor, ever do charity work at the county prison? And while he’s there does he ever treat men for anal ulcers? Because I’d be real curious to see what _his_ diagnosis is, ’cuz _my_ father’s been diagnosing that as VD for the past thirty years.”

Leckie pulled a face.

“You know, with sweet talk like that, I really can’t understand while you’re still a virgin.”

Sledge thumped his chest.

“With sweet talk like that you’re not going to _need_ a condom anytime soon, so I’d suggest you answer my question.”

“Yes, yes, I have a condom.” Leckie walked around to the other side of the bed and knelt to fish around in his bag. The box was a little squashed when he found it—it had been rattling around with his overnight things since the war ended—but there was a condom left and he tossed it on the bed towards Sledge, who had sat down. “And look at that.” He tossed a small, mostly-full tub of vaseline after it. “I came prepared.”

“Vaseline?” Sledge frowned. “Is this all you have?”

“You have _lube preferences_?” Leckie demanded. He was going to complain further, but luckily before he was struck by a sudden image of Sledge fingering himself under the covers of his bed at home, biting his lip so as not to wake anyone up but letting out little gasps every once in a while, figuring out what he liked…. It was an appealing image, and he pulled himself up on the bed and lowered his voice in pitch so his complaint came out as more of an appealing purr. “Do tell me how you managed to develop those.”

His ego deflated somewhat as, instead of blushing and smiling shyly, Sledge picked up the tub and started laughing at him.

“Leckie,” he said. “Vaseline _dissolves_ condoms. It’s oil, this is latex. Did you watch any of those movies the Marine Corps showed us? No wait, don’t tell me, you were in the backseat laughing at ’em with Hoosier and Chuckler and didn’t take in a single word.”

“Sid was there, too,” Leckie shot back. Sledge shook his head fondly and leaned forward for a kiss.

“You’re ridiculous,” he murmured against Leckie’s mouth.

“Take off your shirt,” Leckie replied in kind, in as tender a voice he could manage.

“Hm?”

“This is moving too slowly.” He tugged at the edge of Sledge’s shirt, and realized it was loose enough that he could pull the whole thing over Eugene’s head without undoing any buttons, although it resulted in some indignant squawking. “Lie back and shut up.”

“You are _so_ —”

Whatever he wanted to say was lost almost the second Leckie touched his skin. Leckie felt rather smug about that, but with great willpower he kept his reaction off his face. He cupped Sledge’s shoulders in his hands, touched parted lips to his collarbone, and did his best to look as sincere as he could. As sincere as he _felt_. Because, all jokes and teasing aside, he really did want to make Sledge feel good. Make him happy.

As he moved down Sledge’s chest, dropping kisses as he went, he felt his lungs expand, heard the shaky release of breath above him. He glanced up but couldn’t get a read on Sledge’s expression; his face was blank and his eyes were closed. Leckie sucked his nipple into his mouth and watched a red flush spread over his cheeks—this time he couldn’t help but let out a self-satisfied _hmm_.

“What?” Sledge asked.

“Nothing. You like that, huh?”

“No,” he said petulantly, and Leckie snorted. Sledge shoved him. “I meant—not _particularly_. But I haven’t—nobody’s—it’s been a while, okay? Stop laughing.”

“Okay, okay.” Leckie scooched further down on the bed, tweaking Sledge’s nipple again as he dragged his hands down his sides. He trailed his mouth down his abdomen and paused at his navel. He looked up and cocked his head. “You know I’m only laughing ’cause I like you, right?”

“Do you _ever_ stop talking?” Sledge groaned. “Jesus, Lucky, I know we haven’t met in person that often but I didn’t remember you being this bad.”

A slow, dirty grin spread over Leckie’s face.

“You want me to stop talking?”

“ _Ye_ —” Sledge pushed himself up on his elbows, exasperated, and then froze, taking in Leckie’s position on the bed. His eyes went dark, and he reached out to cup Leckie’s head, toying with his curls. “Yes,” he said in a voice as soft as it was firm.

“Okay, then,” Leckie said, and unbuckled Sledge’s belt.

\---

It wasn’t the most mind-blowingly unbelievable sex Leckie ever had in his life. He didn’t expect it to be, not when this was their first time together, and especially not given the fact that Sledge really didn’t seem to have much experience with sex, for all his claims that he wasn’t a _virgin_ -virgin. Leckie hadn’t expected it to be amazing. What he also hadn’t anticipated, though, was that it would turn out to be perhaps the best hour he’d ever spent in bed with another person. He sucked Eugene’s cock and then Eugene sucked his, and they each came in about three minutes and then flopped back on the pillows.

“You’re, what, twenty-two, we’ll give it another minute and be good to go,” Leckie laughed breathlessly against Sledge’s mouth.

“I’m twenty-three,” Sledge corrected. “My birthday was earlier this month.”

“You didn’t tell me that! I didn’t get you anything,” he said regretfully. He ran his hands up over Sledge’s bare thighs, his ass—he had a little raised birthmark on his right cheek—and the other man wiggled.

“No, you didn’t,” he sighed, kissing under Leckie’s jaw. “So you owe me, huh?”

“Yeah, I do,” Leckie chuckled.

He rolled them over—which produced a round of startled laughter from both of them when they almost rolled off the side of the bed—and leisurely pinned Sledge against the mattress, where they remained for another thirty some-odd minutes. At times they kissed, at times they talked—about dinner, about their letters, about stupid jokes. At times they clutched at each other and bucked together until they came again, and that seemed to slow everything right down. They didn’t talk for a while after that, and Leckie was about to fall asleep with Sledge’s head resting on his shoulder when the redhead sat up.

“I should be getting back,” he yawned.

“Who says?” Leckie asked with a hint of a pout.

“Someone’ll be waiting up for me.” Sledge considered Leckie for a moment before leaning back down to kiss him. “How long are you in town?” he asked, lips barely a centimeter away, and then closing the gap before Leckie could respond.

“Only about a day and a half,” he said regretfully. “I have a game to cover Friday, and with Thanksgiving the day before… Why are you smiling over that?”

“It’s nothing,” Sledge said, waving him off, but as he sat back on his heels there was an impish grin on his face. He tilted his head. “How long’s the trip down to Alabama from New Jersey, huh?”

Leckie realized what he was implying and tried to keep a grin from spreading over his face.

“Not that long,” he said nonchalantly.

“Oh, it’s not?” Sledge teased.

“Nope, no, it’s not.”

“Okay,” he said, with a smile that told Leckie he was letting it slide just this once. “Well, let’s meet tomorrow—ten o’clock? I’ve got no plans. And then I’ll take you out for a meal Wednesday before you go.”

“Perfect.” Leckie propped himself on one elbow and watched as Sledge got dressed. He tossed his jacket over his shoulder and paused at the footboard.

“Aren’t you gonna walk me to the door?”

“Do you really want me to?” Leckie asked, raising his eyebrows in amusement.

“Maybe not smart,” Sledge conceded. He walked to the door and paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Although, if you’re going to keep calling me Scarlett O’Hara, you could stand to pick up a few Southern manners yourself.”

“I’ll get right on that,” Leckie grinned.

Sledge opened the door and stepped out. He poked his head back in one last time and said “Good night” in a gentle voice that made Leckie want to melt into a puddle on the floor.

“Night, Scarlett,” he replied, and the door shut with a quiet click.

Leckie closed his eyes and put his hands behind his head. He was grinning like a maniac and his entire body was bone-tired. He was hoping for a good night’s sleep.


	5. when you see the sun, let it glow

**January, 1947**

“You need to be quieter,” Leckie panted, pressing a kiss behind Sledge’s ear so the words seemed kinder.

“Shut up,” Sledge said between ground teeth, and then he let his head drop with a groan.

“That’s a shared wall, and I’m pretty sure it’s a new one, too—”

“You’ve got to improve your sweet talk.” Sledge flung an arm back and dug his fingers into the bare skin of Leckie’s hip, urging him forward. “Come on, come on—Oh, _God_.”

“That’s it.”

Leckie pulled back, his cock bobbing and dribbling lube onto the sheets. He grabbed Sledge by the shoulder and pulled him over, turning him onto his back. Sledge let out a yelp of laughter and Leckie couldn’t help but laugh, too, even as he kissed him.

“We’re going to try it like this,” he mumbled, kissing his way down Sledge’s neck.

He put his hands on Sledge’s thighs and spread them wide, slotting himself between his legs. He reached down to guide his cock back in Sledge’s ass. He leaned down for another kiss—this time a firm, thorough kiss, sealing their mouths together as tight as he could. Sledge whimpered, but this time the sound was quiet and muffled—and if anything, Leckie found it more arousing than before. And God, this angle—Sledge wrapped his legs around Leckie’s waist and Leckie helped lift him up with a hand on his lower back, and their rhythm became faster and more erratic.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“Oh God,” Sledge gasped. “Oh God that’s so good—that’s so—”

He bit his lip and started to jerk off, and if Leckie hadn’t been close before, he was now. Neither of them were as quiet as they should be—he tried to press his lips to Sledge’s again but they were moving too frantically, teeth clacking and—shit—knocking the headboard against the wall. It was a sturdy bed and it wasn’t moving too much, but still—

Sledge must have noticed he was distracted, because at that moment he reached up to drag his nails down Leckie’s back, clenching around his cock at the same time, and that was _it_ , Leckie was _gone_. He buried himself in Sledge’s ass again with a deep belly groan that their mouths would do absolutely nothing to muffle, and replaced Sledge’s hand with his own, stripping his cock ruthlessly until Sledge was shuddering beneath him. They kissed for another moment, mouths brushing against each other in a vague kind of way, then Leckie pushed himself up on shaky elbows and rolled over.

“So. This is a nice house,” he said. Sledge turned his head and looked at him, and then they both burst into breathless laughter. Sledge kissed Leckie’s shoulder and settled against his side, and pointed at the nightstand.

“There’s a handkerchief. Could you…?”

“Yeah.”

Leckie stretched out to reach the scrap of fabric and passed it over, and Sledge cleaned them up sufficiently. Then he curled up close again.

“Not a bad place, yeah.” He kissed Leckie’s bare shoulder and grinned. “And it’s not awful having company.”

Leckie kissed him back to acknowledge the compliment, and then asked “Are your housemates that bad?” out of genuine curiosity. As far as he could remember, he only heard Sledge talk about his housemates in letters if he wanted to complain. He had shared some good stories, too, but the people in them had mostly been identified as “my friend” or, more frequently, “Sid’s friend.”

“Nah, they’re all right,” Sledge shrugged. “Gordon’s a blowhard—that’s the flag one. The rest are good guys. Peter—I’ve mentioned Peter, he’s friends with Sid, too—he lives here. I told him you were coming and he says he wants to meet you at some point.”

“Does he?”

“Sid’s told stories,” Sledge grinned, and Leckie groaned.

“Fine, I’ll duck in his room and say hello just before I leave.”

“Oh, come on.” Sledge sat up and slung his legs over the side of the bed, and patted Leckie on the thigh. “Let’s go down now. People hang around the common room all the time. We’ll bring work and if you really don’t like anybody, you can always claim a deadline.”

“You’re a clever one, college boy,” Leckie teased. "Does Sid know I’m here?” he asked as they sat up and started to dress.

“Well, I told him you were coming and that you’d get here sometime today. I don’t know if he knows you’re here _now_.”

“Does he know we’re…?”

Sledge’s head snapped around.

“Of course not. You didn’t tell him, did you?”

“No, _I_ didn’t,” Leckie said quickly. “I figured he was your friend first, so I’d follow your lead. But I just wondered if maybe you had. You said you had other friends who knew…”

“Other gay friends, sure. Not Sid.” He was frowning slightly, staring at nothing, and then he seemed to shake himself out of it. He turned back to his side of the bed and resumed buttoning his shirt. “Have you told anybody?” he asked in a measured voice.

“No. Not about you, not about any of it.”

Leckie rolled his shoulders to work out some soreness and picked up his trousers and belt from the floor. He had thought about telling somebody. Not any of his friends from home, of course—not even Cindy—but maybe Chuckler, Runner, or Hoosier. He knew it was a bad idea, just like all of this was a bad idea, but some wistful part of him thought maybe they of all people wouldn’t mind. Most people wouldn’t take it well, but _most_ people weren’t willing to lay their lives on the line for you and _most_ people couldn’t respect a grown man who wet the bed. Once or twice he had almost worked up the nerve.

But every time he sat down to pen a letter, he choked. He didn’t want to plead with them, but it was hard to make his case on paper without feeling like he was explaining too much. Still less did he want to pay for a long-distance, poor-quality phone call. The closest he had ever actually come was when he met Runner in New York just before Christmas, but this thing with Sledge had been too new, then, and in any case he and Runner had been having _fun_ , going around to all the shops and seeing the Rockettes and whatnot. There was no time—and no place, for that matter—to talk about this kind of thing.

“Hey.”

He jumped. Sledge had leaned over. He rested his chin on Leckie’s shoulder.

“You need more friends,” he murmured. Leckie laughed softly.

“Yeah, I do.”

“I told Jay about you.”

“Jay?”

“Jay De L’Eau? He was in the battalion before I was. I thought you might have met him.” Leckie shook his head. “He didn’t remember you either, except he thinks maybe he remembers you were handsome.”

“I think I like Jay.”

“Come on,” Sledge laughed. “Let’s go make you some college friends.”

“Okay.”

Leckie picked up his briefcase and Sledge collected some books and a notepad, and together they descended the creaky old stairs. Based on what Leckie had seen from the back of his cab, Auburn was a small town, and most of the buildings seemed to be only one story; the exceptions were the college buildings and the boarding houses, which were doing very good business now that the school was flooded with its normal burden of students plus returning GIs. There were a few dormitories on campus, but Leckie had been assured that the boarding houses were far more comfortable.

The ground floor was home to a dining room, two small sitting rooms, and a larger common room, which Sledge directed them into. A blonde student built like a football player was sitting at a table frowning at a book, but otherwise it was empty, and even as they sat down in a pair of navy velvet armchairs the student huffed, snapped the book closed, and walked out.

“That’s Billy Moore,” Sledge said in an undertone, nodding after him. “ _He_ was in the service. Infantry.”

“I’m shocked. Saints after him yet?”

“Would you believe he’s never played?”

Leckie glanced around the room. The decorations were old-fashioned, certainly, striped beige wallpaper and lacy curtains that looked like they would be more suited to Jane Austen’s tea room than a men’s boarding house, but it wasn’t a bad place to spend an afternoon. There were three other comfortable mismatched chairs, a desk and a table, and a plethora of ash trays. He looked briefly at the enormous stone fireplace and wondered, with amusement, how much use they got out of that in southern Alabama.

Sledge dropped his pile of books on the coffee table in front of them, but before he could open one, Leckie remembered something with a start.

“Oh, hold on,” he said, holding out a hand. “I brought something to show you.”

He rested his briefcase on his knees and produced a sheaf of papers with a dramatic flourish.

“What’s that?” Sledge said as he sat forward.

“My Bible,” Leckie grinned. “Those are my notes from the war. You let me flip through yours when we met last month, so I figured it was only right to return the favor.”

That had been quite a pleasurable afternoon. Neither of them had had time to make a real visit, not with the holidays, but in between Christmas and New Year’s Sledge had driven up to Charleston and Leckie had taken the train down, and they’d spent two days in a hotel, fucking and drinking and ordering from room service, and talking. Leckie didn’t remember either of them saying anything brilliant (the travel- and sex-related exhaustion coupled with alcohol didn’t allow for much philosophy), but they had _connected_ so easily, just like they had that first day in Mobile—hell, that first day on Pavuvu—and at some point Sledge had handed over his little pocket New Testament.

Even though Leckie hadn’t kept those kinds of notes, there had been something heartbreakingly familiar about the nature of them—the thick pencil lines, the wobble in the handwriting, the spots of blood, sweat, and dirt that marred every page. He still had a handwritten ode, tucked in the middle of a book and thus protected from the rain, that looked just like Sledge’s notes. If his letters to Vera had survived, they would look like them, too. The crisp white paper in Sledge’s hands now didn’t evoke the same visceral reaction, but hopefully the words were enough to make up for it.

“These are _typed_ ,” Sledge said, surprised. “When did you write them up?”

“After I got home. Well, actually, I only typed them a few weeks ago, after you showed me yours. But I had handwritten most of the important parts already, while I was shut up in the hospital stateside. Wanted to make sure everything was still fresh.”

“But…” Sledge turned over the first page and then the second, his brow furrowed quizzically. “You don’t have any _facts_ here. No dates, barely any locations.”

“I work for a newspaper,” Leckie chuckled. “So for one thing, I’ve got a handy memory for dates and names without having to write them down. And for another, if I were _really_ writing these up, it’d be the easiest thing in the world to get my hands on old issues of the paper to verify them. Until then, I only write down the important things.”

“ _Unfortunately, a body is not meant to survive on maggoty rice and Japanese wine for two months. When finally given the chance to gorge myself on an enormous can of Army-quality canned peaches, therefore, I was only able to enjoy them for thirty seconds before falling to my knees and vomiting profusely. From then on, while ‘Lucky’ continued to be my nickname among most of the battalion, my closest friends knew me by one name only: Peaches_.”

Sledge looked up, shaking with laughter.

“The important things,” Leckie repeated solemnly. Sledge snorted and shoved him in the shoulder.

He sat back against the back of his seat and began to read again. Occasionally his mouth curved in a slight smile, or his eyebrow twitched, but aside from that Leckie had very little to go on.

“What do you think?” he asked when it seemed Sledge had read the last page. There was an oddly amused look on his face, and he made a mildly favorable sound. “What?” Leckie pressed.

“Well,” Sledge said, drawing the word out. “I’ve gotta be honest, Leckie—from where I’m sitting, it looks a little violet.”

“What—queer?”

“No.” His pressed lips twitched like he was suppressing a laugh. “Just _purple_. Like this one—” He drew one page out from the rest and scanned it until he reached the bottom. “Here, about Guadalcanal. _The jungle was full of whispering ghosts, whether those of our departed comrades or those of the Japanese soldiers, so silent and so mysterious that, to us, there was little difference between the living and the dead._ ”

“What’s wrong with that?” Leckie said with a frown. “I thought it was pretty good.”

“It’s nice, sure, but it’s—it’s a little Hollywood, don’t you think? This isn’t how you write history. And don’t even say it’s because you’re a journalist, either,” he added, wagging the packet of paper like an admonishing finger. “Because this isn’t that. You’re supposed to sound objective, aren’t you?”

“I told you already, it’s not supposed to _be_ journalism. It’s supposed to be an account of how it felt.”

“But—” Sledge frowned, and then suddenly he looked chagrined. “Never mind, sorry. You didn’t pick apart my notes, so I shouldn’t—”

“No, no, go ahead,” Leckie said with a conciliatory gesture. “Yours wasn’t exactly formal writing, and I don’t mind constructive criticism, as long as I have leave to think you’re completely wrong and ignore all of your advice, no matter how intelligent.”

“Okay,” Sledge chuckled. “I was going to say… this isn’t how you actually felt, back then.”

“It’s not?” Leckie asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No. Because any marine who felt like this—anyone who told himself the Japs were ghosts hiding in every shadow, watching him, impossible to overcome—anyone who thought like this didn’t come back. At least not the right way.”

Their eyes locked, and Leckie’s lungs constricted. They hadn’t actually talked about anything like this. They’d skirted it in their letters, but neither of them had actually brought it up in person. But of course it was going to come up, eventually. He was a fool not to have expected it. He cleared his throat, not knowing what he was going to say—

“Hey, Eugene!”

They both jumped and looked over at the entrance. A young man with dark hair was craning around the doorway, eyes fixed eagerly on the back of Leckie’s chair.

“Anyway, the humor’s good,” Sledge said in an undertone. He handed the notes back and Leckie hastily returned them to his briefcase before he was obligated to present them to a stranger. “Leckie, this is my friend Peter.”

“I knew it,” the student said, grinning and striding forward with his hand outstretched. “Sid’s told us so much about you. Hey, so did your father ever actually send you your dress blues?”

\---

Leckie was still thinking about their argument three days later, sitting on a train rocketing its way towards Jersey. He turned over the words in his head, smiling to himself, and suddenly a new attack occurred to him. Sledge would call him a cheater, probably, for making his argument in paper when it was so much harder to parry back and forth, but he could blame Peter— _Sledge’s_ friend—for interrupting in the first place.

He took a fresh piece of paper from his briefcase and propped it up against his knee.

 _Dear Eugene,_ he wrote.

_I’ve been thinking about what you said, about my notes. I was distracted, earlier, but I think I’m finally able to mount a proper defense. It’s a matter of difference in our two styles, you see. Your notes may be very useful in giving a factual account of the war, and perhaps the way you write is different than the way I write. You may trust your own memory enough to believe that, if you were ever to sit down and write such an account, using only the skeletal facts you recorded, your mind could supply the relevant meat, the “what was I thinking?” and the “how did I feel?” of the war._

_As for me, I don’t think I would ever write up anything like this as a purely factual account. I trust newspapers too much. I believe that, if anyone were ever to read my version of the war (and at present I have no intention to let them), they wouldn’t be reading it for a simple rehashing of the facts, which they likely read at home in their own Journal or Tribune. They would pick it up to learn how it felt to be a marine in the war. And a marine, as you know, rarely has any of the facts of the situation while he is at war. He knows only what he has been ordered to do, and how he feels. So these are the things I must ensure I do not forget. _

_Perhaps another example is in order. (As usual, I’ll be discreet in case this letter falls into the wrong hands.) Recently I had an amorous encounter with a certain individual—let’s call her Scarlett. If I wished to remember this encounter in the future (and I certainly do), I could make a note that our first real kiss, the first kiss that meant something, occurred in a hotel room in Mobile at a certain hour of the evening. But do I really need to? I will no doubt remember that it was evening, and that it was in Mobile—do I need to mark down the exact minute, and the number of the hotel room? These are not the details that, to my mind, really matter. I want to remember what the kiss was like. _

_“Leckie, you dog!” I hear you saying. “How could you ever forget a first kiss with someone you really liked?”_

_To which my answer would be that, if I were to continue in my pursuit of this Miss Scarlett, which I fully intend to do, I might grow accustomed to her kiss. The first one may blend into the second, the fifth, the twenty-seventh, until I forget that it was the first one when she remained very still for a long minute before kissing me, with her hand on my face and her eyes flickering between my eyes and my mouth. I might forget the way my heart was pounding like a parade march until the moment I kissed her, when suddenly I wasn’t aware of my own body at all, except where it was touching her. The soft gasp she made when we pulled away… small details, all, and easily lost, but vital. _

_Now, the language I use may be bombastic, I grant you that. But love and war are experiences beyond description; they steal away your focus and fail to give it back until the sensations have faded, and mere words cannot elicit those same feelings in one who hasn’t experienced them exactly as you did. So I find dramatic prose useful on these occasions, not because it more perfectly captures the experience, but because it conveys to the reader my sense of awe. “Imagine how overwhelmed I was in this moment, that I can’t even describe it! Imagine how I felt, that I’m now unable to make myself understood without resorting to this kind of overblown sentiment!”_

_That is my defense. If you find it inadequate, then we must agree to disagree, but hopefully this has at least given you food for thought._

_Yours,_

_Robert_

\---

Four days later, he got a telegram.

FLATTERY WON’T CHANGE THE FACT THAT I’M RIGHT. NICE TRY. EBS.

He laughed out loud when he got it, and taped it on his bookshelf, where he could see it every time he sat down at his typewriter. If nothing else, it was good writing advice.

 

**April, 1947**

In the following months, they kept up a vigorous correspondence, and Leckie visited Alabama two more times, once in February and once in March. It was agreed that it was better for Leckie to travel, because his job allowed for a bit more flexibility; all he had to do was write like hell for a few nights immediately preceding the train ride, and make sure he returned to New Jersey before the next major game. But even so, he had to use up a couple of vacation days to justify being out of the office entirely, and he quickly realized that wouldn’t be sustainable over the course of the year. So for his spring break in April, Sledge decided to forgo returning home to Mobile and instead bought a ticket for Rutherford.

“We’ll go up to the city tomorrow,” Leckie promised on Sledge’s second night in town, speaking right into his ear so he could be heard over the swing music reverberating through the dance hall. “I just figured since all of this was going on tonight…” He waved his drink around. Rutherford only had one real attraction for young people, a restaurant that offered a low-key dance event twice a week, a real swing party once a month, and mediocre food all the time. “Might as well take advantage of it.”

It was an apology for the previous night, when they had had dinner with Leckie’s parents and his father had exhibited more interest in the gravy boat than his guest.

“It’s fine, really,” Sledge swore. “I don’t mind sticking around here. But I’m not drinking another sip of this,” he said, grimacing as he set aside a neon glass of punch. “How’s the whisky?”

“Shit,” Leckie said cheerfully. “But I’ve drunk worse.”

“Maybe I’ll just get a Coke.”

They were sitting at one of several small tables clustered against the wall, with the unstated aim of avoiding the women in bright floral dresses who occasionally swooped on unattached men near the dance floor and batted their eyelashes until offered a dance. The restaurant had been packed when they entered, so this particular table was close to the entrance, close enough for Leckie to feel the chilly April breeze as the door was opened. Sledge flagged down a waiter and Leckie casually glanced over his shoulder, just in time to see Vera Keller enter the room.

She hadn’t spotted him—she had turned to address a tall, dark-haired man with a cleft chin who had entered just behind her. Leckie didn’t know the man, but he hated him, but then he remembered that he didn’t give a shit anymore, and he turned back to the table to try and banish his confusion.

He had mostly given up on Vera, these last few months. Hell, he’d mostly given up on _women_. Before Sledge, all of his relationships had been strongest in the very beginning, when he was high on the thrill of the chase. After that his interest had begun to wane. He could never pinpoint why, and when the relationship finally ended, the heartbreak had consumed his thoughts instead and pushed the why away. Even accounting for the fact that he and Sledge had only seen each other in person a handful of times, they were long past the usual point of boredom and showed no signs of slowing down. It had taken Leckie a long time to realize it, but—well, this was who he was now. Not a chronic degenerate prowling the streets, but a homosexual nonetheless.

But Vera was still a sore spot. Maybe Vera would always be a sore spot.

“Ah.” The syllable was heavy with wisdom, and Leckie looked up with raised brows to find Sledge peering over his shoulder. “The famous Vera Keller, I presume?” he murmured.

“Mm-hm.”

“She’s beautiful,” he said sympathetically. “This can’t be the first time you’ve seen her since…?”

“No, no, but—waving at each other from our separate driveways isn’t the same thing. And I’m usually not with _you_.”

“What do _I_ have to do with anything?” Sledge squawked, but before Leckie could explain, the other man’s eye was caught by something at Leckie’s back, and he cleared his throat. Nothing short of proud military forbearance and the certain knowledge that Vera Keller herself was behind him could have stopped Leckie from groaning out loud.

“Bob?”

“Hey, Vera,” he said, turning around with a smile. “Good to see you.”

“You, too,” Vera said, warmly, like she meant it. “I haven’t seen you here in ages—I didn’t think this was your kind of place.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad,” Leckie waved. “And besides…” Vera’s eyes had drifted curiously towards Sledge, and Leckie turned to include him in the conversation. “My friend Eugene came all the way up from Alabama, so I had to entertain him somehow.”

“Eugene Sledge,” he said, extending his hand, which Vera shook.

“Vera Keller—it’s good to meet you. Now remind me, did you two serve together?”

“Same battalion, different company,” Sledge nodded. “Leckie was in the same platoon as my friend Sid.”

“Sid, that’s right. We never met, but Bob definitely mentioned him once or twice. Well, welcome to New Jersey. This is Rick Dawes. He had to travel quite some distance to get here, too, all the way from the far side of Newark.”

A chuckle escaped Leckie’s mouth, completely ruining his cool and distant composure, and for a moment he and Vera locked gazes with a grin. Sledge, of course, had little to no idea how close Newark was, so his smile was more polite than anything, and Rick, despite his good looks, seemed hopelessly dim, because his only comment was “Traffic wasn’t that bad.” Hands were shook, and there was a moment’s awkward pause before Vera launched into conversation again.

“Is it just the two of you here?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, Rick and I are meeting some friends and you’re welcome to join us. Julian and Shirley are here,” she added, forestalling the excuse on the tip of Leckie’s tongue. “You know them, of course. And my friends Denise and Pearl, you’ve met them, right?”

“Yes…” Leckie said slowly, looking at Sledge for help.

Sledge was absolutely no help.

“I don’t dance,” he warned. “But dinner and conversation I can do, if Bob doesn’t mind.”

“Sure,” Leckie swallowed his objections. “We’ll join you in just a minute—we’ve just ordered drinks, so we’ll wait for them to get here.”

“Okay, sure. Well, we’re over in the corner booth when you’re ready.”

Vera turned and left with a swish of her swing skirt. She was wearing dark emerald green tonight, which wasn’t a color she wore often, but of course she still looked stunning in it. Leckie realized belatedly that she hadn’t said a word about who Rick was. He wondered if it would be odd to ask, and decided he had more important things to worry about. He rounded on Sledge.

“Why.”

“Why what?” Sledge asked innocently, tilting his head down in a pathetic attempt to hide the mischievous grin on his face. “Oh, there’s our waiter.” He waved the man down and accepted his drink. “We’re joining some friends across the room over there,” he told him.

“So if you could bring some more whisky that a-ways, we’d appreciate it,” Leckie added. “By the bottle, by the barrel, whatever works.”

“One glass,” Sledge corrected. The waiter shot them a beleaguered look and disappeared, and Sledge stood. “Come on, up you get. Hup two three four, let’s go.”

They crossed the dance floor and reached the far booth, and immediately Vera leapt up to play hostess.

“There they are! Julian, Shirley, you know Bob.” Leckie and Julian had gone to high school together; Shirley and Vera had both been at St. Theresa’s, the girl’s school, but Julian and Shirley had been going steady for ages, so Leckie knew them both. They waved and nodded. “And actually now that I think about it, Bob, you’ve met Pearl but not Denise, isn’t that right? Well, you all know each other _now_. Bob’s a reporter with the Bergen County Record; Denise is in her senior year at Mount Holyoke, but she’s down for spring break.”

“Oh, so am I,” Sledge said. “Eugene Sledge. I go to to Alabama Polytechnic, and we’re off this week, too.”

“Get out of here,” Denise said, perking up all the way to the voluminous curl on the top of her head, which was impressive even in the age of the victory roll. “My cousin goes to Bama Poly. His name’s Samuel Carson, he’s about to graduate with his BS in Chemistry—do you know him?”

“I might have met him once or twice. I’m actually only a freshman, you see, because I was in the Marines, but I’ve got a couple of friends in the Chemistry Department.”

“Well, isn’t this perfect?” Vera smiled. “And you didn’t want to join us,” she teased Leckie.

“I said no such thing!” he protested, finding himself playing accosted on all sides. “ _If_ I was hesitant, it was only because I was doubting my ability to entertain such lovely ladies as yourselves.”

“Yeah, I’m a dull fellow so he had a much easier time entertaining me,” Sledge interjected, and just like that, they were all conversing, as easy as you like.

A few questions about the Marines were directed at Sledge, and then Julian brought up his time in the Navy, and Denise had another cousin who was in the Navy too, and so on and so forth. Then they moved on to talk of school and careers, and as that began to wind down, Leckie made the smooth transition to a rehash of some of the local games, and then, when Vera realized that Sledge had very little to contribute, she steered the conversation towards Alabama, which inevitably led to a comparison of Alabama and New Jersey, and so on and so forth

As the evening wore on, Leckie found himself having to fake enthusiasm less and less. It helped, actually, that Vera didn’t treat him any differently than she had before. He’d always _liked_ her, and he’d always admired how well she conducted herself in casual social circumstances like this, and breaking up hadn’t changed that. It helped, too, having Eugene there. He was a bit quieter than Vera, a bit more introspective, but when he did have something to say it was often funny and frequently intelligent—and every time Leckie needed someone at whom to direct a conspiratorial glance, Sledge was an excellent choice.

They got through dinner that way, and then Leckie was in a good enough mood to offer Pearl and Denise a dance or two each. The two couples joined them, too. Julian was an awkward dancer, but Shirley, Rick, and Vera were all very good, and the live band had enough energy to make up for the fact that it was butchering some of best hits of the day. After a few lively swing dances, Leckie pleaded tiredness and joined Sledge at the table again, and eventually the whole group retired to coffee, cocktails, and cigarettes.

Somehow they found themselves discussing the atomic bomb and the ethics thereof, a subject that Leckie had been following obsessively in every newspaper, even though he knew it only pissed him off when he came across something that he disagreed with. It didn’t surprise him that most of the civilians (and Julian, who had always been a bit of an ass) were in favor of the president having unlimited power over nuclear war, but he was surprised that Sledge agreed with them. He was a smart, serious, introspective guy, and he ought to know better—and Leckie told him so.

“It’s a weapon like any other,” Sledge said, shaking his head. “Sure it does more damage, so does every new weapon in the history of the world. My great-great-grandfather fought in the Revolution, you think if I compared my stovepipe to his musket he wouldn't be shocked? Should we need Congress’s approval every time we send a brand new machine gun against an enemy who hasn’t caught up yet?”

“They’re nowhere near equivalent," Leckie protested. “At Hiroshima, one pilot with one bomb killed a hundred thousand people. _John Basilone_ couldn’t level a city with a machine gun and all the ammo the US Marine Corps saw fit to give him. God rest his soul, semper fi, and all the rest.”

“Well, so what?” Rick shrugged. “It’s not like the president is going to drop an atomic bomb every other day of the week. The president gets to declare war—”

“Congress declares war.”

“Okay, but the President gets to decide what _happens_ in the war. Congress says the president has the right to conduct war however he likes, which is already a serious thing. The atomic bomb is one more level of that. It’s a last resort.”

“You say that now because Truman used it as a last resort, but the next war, there’s no guarantee it won’t become standard. The next president might feel different—hell, the next country that figures it out might feel different. What if the Japs had made it first?”

“The Japs _did_ bomb us first!” Julian said hotly.

“Oh really? See, I didn’t know that, I joined the Marines on December 7th because I was feeling particularly patriotic for no reason.” This earned him a few chuckles, and Leckie persisted. “I’m saying what if, after that, after there was an official declaration of war, the Japs had made an atomic bomb, and dropped it on the United States? And, when we protested, the entire world said ‘well, that’s just how the game is played now’? And what if they picked a major population center, this time, a civilian city that happens to have a few loading docks that are used to declare it a military target? Say, San Francisco. Japs drop an a-bomb on San Francisco, are we all okay with that because, hey, it’s just another weapon and they thought seriously before doing it?”

“That’s hardly the same thing, Bob,” Vera reminded him. She didn’t seem persuaded by either side; she had the air of a debate judge calling for a point of clarification. “San Francisco is larger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Besides, you’re forgetting that, with victory in Europe, the entire might of the US Armed Forces was about to be mustered to attack Japan. So it’s _possible_ that the United States may have been on the verge of causing just as much actual damage to the Japanese population, and the only difference is that would have taken longer and put more American lives at risk.”

“A traditional army wouldn’t have done as much damage to the civilian population.”

“Are you sure?” Sledge said sharply. “London lost civilians. So did Paris, so did Berlin. Hell, so did Okinawa. And with the popularity of the emperor over there, who’s to say anyone who marched into Tokyo wouldn’t find a civilian guerrilla army working with the imperial troops?”

“Okay, enough of this,” Shirley protested. “The war’s over—why do we have to go rehashing it all the time? Can’t you all find something more pleasant to talk about?”

Most of the people in the circle murmured their assent. Leckie looked around and was forced to acknowledge his defeat. He shrugged, sat back in his seat, and flashed a grin at Sledge, who crooked a smile around his pipe.

“Anyone hear the latest on the Jewish state business?” he asked breezily.

“I did,” Leckie said. “UN’s putting a team together to carve up Palestine. The Arabs are saying it’ll mean war—maybe Truman will drop an a-bomb on Jerusalem.”

Sledge grinned at him while the rest of the men groaned and Shirley reproached them again.

“Who wants to dance?” she asked as she stood up. Pearl joined her immediately, but Vera and Denise remained seated, and the men exchanged guilty looks.

“I’d love to, sweetheart, but my dogs are barking,” Julian pleaded out.

“ _Your_ feet hurt?” she repeated incredulously, and Leckie half-expected her to emphasize the point by kicking him with her nice heels, but Shirley was, in the end, good natured, and she simply fell back into her chair with a sigh. “Oh, all right. I don’t really like this song, anyway.”

“I’ve never heard it before,” Sledge commented curiously. “Who’s it from?”

“It’s a Benny Goodman song,” Pearl said, surprised. “You don’t know Benny Goodman?”

“He’s got colored artists in his band; they don’t play him south of the Mason Dixon,” Leckie pointed out.

He stubbed out his cigarette and contemplated lighting another, but a glance at the face of his watch discouraged him; it really was getting late. He drained his last drink instead, despite the fact that it was now more water than whiskey.

“I think they’re closing soon,” Vera said, having spotted his surreptitious check on the time. “If no one else wants to dance, maybe we should start walking home. Assuming the two of you were planning to go home,” she added, addressing Leckie and Sledge.

“Oh, we’re not that wild,” Leckie grinned. “Anymore.”

“I’m staying at the Pine View Hotel,” Sledge said. “But it’s in the same direction, isn’t it? So I can walk with y’all for a while.”

Rick flagged down a waiter. They paid the check and gathered their coats. Leckie paused just outside the door, put a cigarette in his mouth, and made a show of patting his pockets. The rest of the group started meandering towards Vera and Leckie’s street, while Sledge hung back and offered his lighter.

“Still mad at me?” Sledge asked with an amused smile.

“Oh, never.”

“Honestly, Lucky, the look you gave me when I said we’d join ’em…” he chuckled.

“Well, what’d you say it for, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Sledge shrugged. “It’s not like we could’ve really talked much, anyway, with all that noise. And besides, I wanted to meet her. I was curious. I like her.”

“Yeah,” Leckie said grudgingly. “Me, too.” They started walking after their companions, and Leckie blew out a mouthful of smoke and watched it dissipate, the same color as the blue-grey clouds obscuring the stars. “Want to know a secret?” he asked suddenly.

“Go for it.”

“I was thrilled when Truman dropped that fucking bomb.”

A ghost of a smile flitted on Sledge’s face.

“I wasn’t.”

Leckie wanted to kiss him. He didn’t. He wanted to squeeze his hand, but he didn’t do that either. He touched his hand to the small of Sledge’s back for just a moment, and then they drew apart. They quickened their pace to catch up with the group, and as they approached, Denise dropped back to talk to Sledge about her cousin.

Leckie smoked and dawdled by himself at the back for a while, until suddenly Vera melted out of the crowd and started walking by his side. He smiled at her—it came much easier than it had earlier in the night—and she smiled back warmly.

“Have you forgiven me yet?” she asked as she looped her arm through his.

“Miss Keller, have I ever given you reason to think I was angry at you?” Leckie asked gallantly, but the effect was ruined as Vera laughed right in his face.

“I don’t think I said anything about being angry, Bob, but I’ve never seen anyone sulk quite like you. God, the look you gave me when I told you it was all for the best… but I think now we can both agree I’m right, can’t we?”

Then, in Leckie’s mind, Vera did something very strange. She tilted her head and fixed her eyes on Sledge’s back.

“He’s perfect,” she sighed.

“Hey, I brought him up here so he could take a vacation,” Leckie reproved when he could speak, although he wasn’t able to banish the puzzlement from his voice. “Not to be chased after by bold Yankee girls.”

“No, Bob,” Vera laughed. “Perfect for _you_  My mother always says you have to look at how people argue. If they argue the right way, you know it’s going to last. If they don’t, head for the hills.”

Leckie stopped in his tracks. Vera stumbled and looked up at him, blue eyes wide and innocent.

“Vera. What are you implying?”

“I—do I have it wrong?” she asked. Her brow furrowed. “I didn’t think…”

“No,” Leckie said. His heart was pounding like crazy. “No, you have it right.” The rest of the party had kept walking and they needed to follow if they didn’t want to get left behind. He resumed walking, but at a slower pace, and ducked his head. “How the hell do you have it right?” he hissed. Vera giggled.

“You’re my _third_ ,” she said. “Can you believe that? I’ve had more—well— _sensitive_ boyfriends than I’ve had regular ones. It must be something about my face. I suppose I come off sympathetic.”

“Yeah, you do,” Leckie replied dazedly. “You’re—you’re not going to tell anyone?”

“Oh, God, no,” she said, shaking her head. “No, don’t you worry about me. Mum’s the word. After all, you don’t know the other two, do you?”

“No,” Leckie said slowly. “Although I bet I could figure it out. I paid close attention to all your boyfriends so I could hate them easier.” Vera snorted and slapped his arm lightly. “You know, you turned out to be right about the whole thing, but… if there was ever a woman…”

“Aw, you’re sweet.” Vera kissed his cheek and Leckie squeezed her arm tighter. “I did feel awful afterwards, though. And actually, now I can...” She hesitated. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t be fair to offer to be your date. Wouldn’t want to get your mother’s hopes up again. But if you need a _friend_ at all, I hope you’ll think of coming to see me. Now that we’ve moved past everything.”

“Of course, Vera, and the same to you. Speaking of boyfriends. You and Rick?”

Vera gave an arch smile and a prim little shrug, and turned to face the front.

“He’s a moron,” Leckie offered.

“But have you seen those shoulders?”

“Come to think of it, that Dunworthy was a moron, too. Do you prefer your non-homosexual boyfriends to all be idiots?”

“You barely knew Charles!” Vera protested. “And besides, Bob, I really don’t think you could have judged him fairly. The uniform blinded you—if they’d put Albert Einstein in an Army uniform for whatever reason, you’d start arguing he was a moron.”

“And if he’d agreed to put it on, I’d be right.”

At that moment, Sledge looked over his shoulder, no doubt wondering why Leckie had dropped out of the crowd. He spotted him, and smiled—and then his gaze fell to Vera, and he looked confused for a brief moment before nodding at them both and looking in front of him again. Vera giggled.

“He thinks I’m stealing you away,” she whispered dramatically. Leckie snorted.

“You know, if it weren’t for you, we probably wouldn’t be together. I went down to Alabama to nurse my broken heart, met him at the train station, and that was that.” He paused. “Well, no, not exactly that, but things were set in motion.”

“I’d like to hear the whole story someday. Not now—we’re almost home, anyway—but someday when it’s just you me, and a bottle of gin. He really is a dish, isn’t he?”

“I think so,” Leckie grinned, oddly proud. They both looked at Sledge, Leckie overwhelmed by a fuzzy kind of fondness. Vera tilted her head thoughtfully.

“Like I said, it’s the arguments,” she said. “You never argued with me, before, not even as a joke. If I tried to start one you’d just get this dopey look on your face and agree with me or brush it off. In order to see someone as a real person, you’ve got to be able to argue with them. And when you’re arguing, you’ve got to be able to still see them as a person. Have you two had your first real fight yet?”

“No, actually, I don’t think so,” Leckie said, casting his mind back. “Well, we haven’t been together that long, and it’s hard to argue over letters. We’ve had some spirited debates, but I can’t think of any fights.”

As he said that, though, he thought with some unease of an issue that had been on his mind a lot of late: Sledge’s mania for hotels. It was understood that Leckie would stay in a hotel when he visited Mobile. It only made sense; the guest rooms in the Sledge house were on the opposite side of the house, and there were four other people living there, plus the servants who arrived early in the morning. Getting caught was a real risk.

But Leckie had no idea why he had to get a hotel room in Auburn. Sledge insisted it was for the best, that the other men in the house would be suspicious if he tried to stay in Sledge’s small room, but more than once the matron of the house had seen him leaving and scolded him for staying elsewhere. She had told him that the other students often had friends kip on their floors and that she would be happy to provide him with a bedroll, and breakfast in the morning for a reasonable fee. He was confused, too, why Sledge had booked a hotel in Rutherford, despite the fact that Leckie had told him ahead of time that his parents’ room was on the opposite side of the landing from both Leckie’s bedroom and the guest bedroom.

Most bizarrely, in his mind, was the fact that Sledge had even taken the effort to book them in separate hotel rooms when they had had their tryst _at a hotel_. Separate rooms completely down the hall from each other, no less. At the time, he had chalked it up to the fact that they didn’t know each other all that well yet, but now he was forced to conclude it was something bigger than that. Sledge just didn’t want to sleep with him. Whether that was caution or… well, or something else, Leckie didn’t know. He had never confronted Sledge about this odd quirk, and he had no reason to think that doing so would provoke a fight except for an unexplained feeling of foreboding.

And as they were turning onto their street, he decided this was not the time to share his vague ominous feeling with Vera. She looked thoughtful enough already.

“Hmm. Well, I won’t wish fights on you, but I hope that whenever it happens, it’s a _good_ one.”

“Thank you, Miss Keller,” Leckie laughed.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Leckie.”

Sledge looked back again, and smiled to see them laughing. Leckie winked and then, remembering Vera’s earlier joke, blew a kiss to assure Sledge he wasn’t being seduced away. Sledge rolled his eyes, but as he turned away Leckie could see he was smiling to himself.


	6. it would break your heart, if you knew how I loved you

Two nights before Sledge was due to leave New Jersey, they made love in Leckie’s childhood bedroom, which might have felt strange were it not for the darkness of the room. The only illumination came from the lamps outside, filtered through the curtains so it seemed more like pale shadows than light. They had to keep quiet, too, so as not to wake Leckies’ parents, and the result was that every sensation felt still and surreal. He was intoxicated by Sledge’s hushed whispers, and his skin seemed unbearably soft beneath Leckie’s touch.

They laid together under the blankets for a long time afterward, holding each other and not saying a word. Leckie waited until his heart returned to its normal pace, and gently kissed Sledge on the lips. He was about to say something very foolhardy when the other man stirred.

“I should go back to the hotel,” he murmured.

“No,” Leckie groaned, but Sledge was already sitting up and reaching for the lamp.

He winced at the sudden light, but he still had enough presence of mind to admire the way it played on the muscles of Eugene’s back as he stood and bent to step into his briefs and trousers. The yellowish glare of the lightbulb was probably the only thing that could make his skin take on that golden tone; he doubted the sun could produce it.

“You don’t think there might be some questions in the morning?” Sledge asked with a smile, slipping his undershirt over his head.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t,” Leckie said, propping himself up on one elbow. “Dad’s got work in the morning, Ma’ll be out of the house by ten for bridge or shopping or whatever she does to avoid being here. All you’ve got to do is stay put and keep quiet as a church mouse til then.”

“You’ve thought of everything.” Sledge sat on the edge of the bed to do up the buttons of his shirt, and Leckie sat up all the way.

“Mm.” He kissed Sledge’s neck. “Come back to bed. I’ll make it worth your while.”

“I’m tired,” Sledge laughed, ducking away as Leckie continued to nuzzle his shoulder.

“In the morning, when we’ve got nothing to do but wait. Nobody’s expecting me in the office until the afternoon.”

“No, Leckie.”

He dipped his shoulder again and his voice was firm, and Leckie took the rejection for what it was, leaning back against the headboard.

He watched, frowning, as Sledge bent to tie his shoes and tried to will away the sudden rush of resentment that had overtaken him. Not wanting to sound like a sulky child, he took a deep breath and worked his jaw for a moment. He managed to speak in a reasonably steady voice.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he said.

“Hm?”

“When you leave right after. I feel like I’ve just gotten off with a call girl.”

“ _Excuse_ me.”

“Or that I’m a call girl,” he added, trying to mollify. “Depending on who’s leaving. It feels like this is just sex.”

“Well,” Sledge shrugged.

Leckie waited for him to finish the sentence, and then realized that was all he intended to say.

“Well, _what_?” he demanded, and Sledge looked over at him, startled by his tone.

“Well, obviously I meant it when I said you’re probably one of my closest friends… but this part is just sex, isn’t it? It’s not like we’re _going steady_ or anything,” he snorted.

It was like a vacuum had erupted in the room; the air was sucked from Leckie’s lungs with such force that it made his chest ache, and he could hear nothing above the rush of blood in his ears. Sledge had looked away again, this time to buckle his belt, but before Leckie could think of a response he turned back.

“Lucky?” he asked curiously, and Leckie tried to school his face into a less thunderstruck expression. He sat forward.

“What—sorry—what are you—” He scratched at his forehead and laughed in a helpless kind of way, and let his hands fall to his lap. “Sorry, just, explain to me, besides the fact that we’re not high school juniors, what’s wrong with ‘going steady’? We like each other, and we’re sleeping together and going out, when we can, isn’t that ‘going steady’?”

“No,” Sledge said simply.

“Why not?”

“Because we’re not… in love.” Something in his face changed, and he sank down on the bed. “You didn’t think we were…?”

“Yeah,” Leckie said, voice hoarse as he realized that that was the final nail in the goddamn coffin of deniability. “Yeah, I thought we were. What—why the hell wouldn’t you think we were serious?”

“Well, I—” Sledge blushed. “I thought we were just fooling around. You said that’s what you’d done before, and the only thing that changed was being friends, and I thought it… it’d be nice to get a break from always worrying about being in love.  You never said anything!”

“Not _yet_ ,” Leckie said. He was having a hard time keeping his irritation from his voice, which wasn’t great, giving the nature of the conversation, and he ran his hands through his hair. “Jesus, Eugene, if you were expecting every guy to declare his love for you after the second date, no wonder you’ve been disappointed so often.”

“That was uncalled for,” Sledge said immediately.

“It was,” Leckie agreed. He sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s kind of rough to hear you’ve been thinking of me as—I don’t know, a bit of fun, while I’ve been— I mean, you’ve read my letters, haven’t you? I thought I’d been pretty clear about how I felt.”

“Yes,” Sledge said slowly. “I… yeah, I’ve read them, and you have been… effusive.” He seemed to be biting the inside of his cheek, and then he took a deep breath. “Maybe you were right in the first place, about keeping sex and friendship separate. I think it's gotten everything mixed up.”

“You really don’t believe I’m in love with you,” Leckie said in a numb voice.

“No, I don’t.”

“You think—you think I go all the way to Alabama once a month for sex?” he demanded.

“No, I think…” Sledge sighed. “I think you feel very romantic coming all the way down to Alabama to see me. And I think you feel very romantic writing all those nice letters, but—but it’s _different_ when we meet in person. You don’t talk the same way and I don’t think you feel the same way, either. It may not be just sex, but… it’s not love, either, Lucky.”

He chose his words delicately but still they walloped Leckie like a mallet to the head. His instinct was to push back, to defend himself because it wasn’t true, goddamnit, and he was tired of having people explain his own goddamn feelings to him—but his stomach was roiling like the worst seasickness he’d ever had. He couldn’t say those words weren’t familiar. He couldn’t say for sure that they weren’t true.

Leckie got out of bed and put his boxers back on, and started fishing around in his bedside table for a smoke. The pack was empty and he swore and crossed over to the desk instead.

“So we’re back where we were eight months ago,” he spat at Sledge. “I can’t fall in love with anybody and you fall in love with everybody except me.”

Sledge colored.

“Don’t say it like that,” he demanded. “That—that makes it sound like there’s someone else, and there isn’t.”

“Isn’t there?”

He’d wondered, that first day in Alabama. The frequency with which Sledge mentioned Sid, and the wistfulness in his voice. But he’d set it aside, because it was none of his business and because it hadn’t _mattered_. Sid was happily married, and it had seemed like Sledge was happily falling into a relationship with Leckie. Some schoolboy crush shouldn’t have been important.

God, he’d been such a fucking idiot.

“Bob, come on!” Sledge said hotly. His flush deepened as dark as his hair. “Do you really think I would do that to you?”

“I didn’t say you were fucking anybody. You don’t need to be fucking somebody to get worked up, you do it all by yourself. Tell Sid I said hello.”

God _damn_ it, why couldn’t he get his hands on a cigarette? He slammed the desk drawer shut.

“Sid?” Sledge’s forehead creased in genuine confusion. “You think I’m in love with _Sid_?”

“Eugene, for God’s sake, don’t look at me like I’m a moron. I met you two days before the wedding and you were moping about _falling in love with people who can never love you back_ , and then at the wedding you’re three sheets to the wind and then you’re writing all these letters about how Mobile’s _just not the same anymore_ , did you really think I wouldn’t be able to put two and two together?”

Sledge opened his mouth to respond and then closed it again, pressing his lips tight together, and for the first time real anger sparked in his eyes. Leckie greeted its arrival with pleasure; it was easier to fight with someone who was really fighting back.

“Maybe I was in love with Sid,” he said tightly. “Maybe I still am. So what? So fucking _what_ ? He’s my _best friend_ , has been for longer than you can imagine, and I’m always going to be in love with him and he’s never going to give a damn! I’ve known him for fifteen years and we go to the same damn university, we see each other every day—do you really think I’d be able to do that if I was pining after him all the time? You really think he’s going to stop me from falling in love with anyone else? And for you to throw that in my face—you’re a piece of work, Leckie.”

“So maybe it’s not Sid,” Leckie said, stepping forward as Sledge reached for the door. “It’s still _somebody_. There’s still something holding you back, because I’m not the only one who doesn’t talk in person the way he talks in letters. You say all of these things as if you want to talk, as if you want me to understand, and then I see you and it’s like everything’s fine, and you won’t say anything different. Like you’re shocked that I’m a real person and not your goddamn diary!”

“It’s not the same thing,” Sledge insisted, rounding on him.

“Oh, it’s not?”

“No, because I’m never pretending to be someone else. I’m never pretending to be this—this huge romantic— I keep things to myself sometimes, that’s my right. I’m sorry if you’ve got the wrong idea—”

“I don’t have the wrong idea. You want more. I _know_ you do, but you just won’t admit—”

“ _Fine!_ ” Sledge said, his voice almost a shout, and instinctively Leckie held up a hand and hissed “shhhh!”

They both glanced at the door and waited for a breathtaking moment, but Leckie couldn’t hear anything except the pounding of his own heart. Sledge looked back at him and took a step forward. It was—surprisingly intimidating. He was a few inches shorter than Leckie, but the tilt of his chin and the brightness in his eyes made up for the difference.

“ _Fine_ ,” he repeated in a soft growl. “I won’t admit it. I don’t want to. I’m tired of the whole _thing_ , Leckie, okay, I’m tired of relying on people and I’m tired of getting my heart broken and I’m tired of people _leaving_. Because that’s what always happens, I get left behind, and if you think I’m a coward for—”

“I never—”

“—it, then fine, I’m a coward. I’ve made my peace with it and you’ll have to do the same, because it’s not worth it when everyone’s going to leave!”

His voice was quiet, but it was so raw and so venomous that it made Leckie’s head spin. He stared at Eugene and for a moment… for a moment something in the other man’s eye changed, softening around the edges. For a moment Leckie could see everything that had been hinted at in Sledge’s letters, the fear and the loneliness and the anger that ran so deep, Sledge himself was afraid of it. For a moment, Leckie was afraid, too.

Then he looked down and snorted.

“What the hell are you laughing at?” Sledge demanded in a voice dripping with disgust.

“Nothing,” Leckie sighed. Then he chuckled again and looked up with a bittersweet smile. “I’m sorry. Nothing—just. Jesus Christ, you’re twenty-three and you’ve decided real love doesn’t exist. Took my parents fifteen years of marriage to figure that out.”

Suddenly he remembered lighting a cigarette on their walk home earlier in the evening. It had been a chilly afternoon. Leckie crossed the room again and took a pack and his lighter from the pocket of his jacket. Sledge eyed him suspiciously for a moment but Leckie tried not to meet his gaze. He sat back down on the bed and lit his smoke.

“Yeah, well,” Sledge said. “Always been a bit ahead of the curve, I guess.” He perched on the other side of the bed. A deep sigh rippled through him. “What are we even _doing_ right now?” he asked wearily.

Leckie swallowed. _I’m trying to win a debate about whether you’re in love with me_ , he thought, but it sounded so patently ridiculous that he didn’t put voice to a single word. He shrugged.

“Stupid,” he muttered. “Let’s just—end it. Forget about it.”

He sounded wounded, and he felt it. He tried to remember if he had felt this bad over Vera, and couldn’t decide. On the one hand, he had known Vera for so much longer. On the other… he looked past Sledge’s shoulder at his desk, at the drawer that contained all of Sledge’s letters, at the portrait of him still tucked into the outside of the picture frame, at the telegram taped to the wall, and he was startled at how close he was to crying.

He had never been totally convinced that Vera was real. She was always the Perfect Girl, the one just out of reach, and so it had never been a surprise when she slipped from his grasp. But Eugene… he was real, and he was human, and Leckie had never doubted that. Never idolized him. Never had any reason to think he shouldn’t fall in love with him, and that he couldn’t be loved in return.

He stretched his legs out on the comforter and laid back down, and Sledge did too, propping himself up on one elbow.

“Lucky, I didn’t mean to do this,” he said in a soft voice. “I really didn’t… I didn’t—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Leckie mumbled. “I’ll bounce back.” He looked over and attempted a grin. “Although I think I’m going to give blondes a try next time. I don’t seem to be having much luck with anybody else.”

Sledge snorted and shoved him, and Leckie smiled to himself and stared out through the curtains. Every other house on the street was dark; there were little pinpricks of light from the streetlamps, but no illuminated windows, and even the porch lights were all darkened. The room seemed even quieter than before, and he was unbearably aware of Sledge’s closeness. Even given the past few minutes, he couldn’t push that awareness aside.

“Hotel rooms,” he mumbled. “I just wanted to know about the fucking hotel rooms, and now…. But really, what’s the harm in it?” he asked in a quiet voice, more of a loud whisper than anything else, and Sledge sighed again. “In staying over? It just strikes me as—I don’t know. Locking the barn door when the cow’s already gone.”

“Horse,” Sledge corrected. “You’re such a Yankee.”

“Oh, right, because you’re such a farmboy, Mobile.” He turned his head on the pillow and let his eyes rest on Sledge’s face. His gaze had dropped to the sheets. Leckie felt a strong urge to reach out and tweak his chin, but he resisted. “Hey,” he said softly, and Sledge looked up. “I mean it. I want to know. Forget—forget love, I just mean being _close_. It’s not about the sex, so... is it— is it too…”

He trailed off. Leckie was rarely at a loss for words, and the truth was he knew exactly what he _could_ say, what he meant to say. But he looked away and inhaled the smoke from his cigarette instead. If Sledge told him that it was because he really couldn’t stand to be in Leckie’s company that long, that was one thing—he didn’t want to have to form the words himself.

“You’re not getting worked up about this, are you?” Sledge said pleadingly. “Leckie, I mean it, honest, it’s nothing about you, it’s—”

He worked his jaw for a moment but nothing came out. Slowly, expecting to be rebuffed, Leckie reached out his hand and ran his fingers through Sledge’s hair. It had gotten mussed during their earlier activities; he combed through it and tucked a lock behind Sledge’s ear. The redhead let him, and his eyes drifted shut.

“I get nightmares,” he admitted finally, voice ticking up at the end as though it were a question. “Real bad ones. I….”

“Who the hell doesn’t?”

“No,” Sledge said forcefully. “I mean I get nightmares and I turn over and talk in my sleep and scream so loudly I wake myself up sometimes.” He stared at Leckie, dark eyes boring holes through his face, and a bitter curl came to his lip. “There it is. I came back from the Marine Corps with no conquests, no special skills, I can’t even pick up a rifle anymore, and a year later I still wake up screaming like a child a couple times a month. There you go. And if I couldn’t make anything work then, it sure as hell won’t work now.”

Leckie had to say something.

He knew he had to say something.

If he opened his mouth, he was going to throw up.

He had never told anybody about the nightmares. Once or twice maybe he had thought about putting it in a letter to Chuckler, but every time the memory of Banika reared its ugly head. So he wasn’t pissing himself anymore, so what? Waking up crying, sweating, shaking, unable to distinguish jungle from Jersey, that had to be worse, right? He had only survived Banika by looking at guys like Captain Midnight, like poor Gibson, and thinking _I’m not like them. I don’t belong here_. If he told anybody… would he still be able to say that? Or would they confirm he was over the edge?

His cigarette was burning down, and he stubbed it out with a shaking hand. His other hand had stilled in Eugene’s hair. It was shock, nothing more, but it might look bad. He resumed his idle petting. Sledge was growing his hair out, and it felt heavy and soft under Leckie’s fingertips. He trailed his hand down and cupped his cheek. Sledge closed his eyes.

 _I’m like you_ , Leckie should say. _I belong with you_.

“Nothing?” Sledge said dully.

“What were you expecting?” Leckie managed. Sledge sighed.

“Hell, I don’t know. Pity. Contempt. Or maybe some of that… patented Leckie eloquence and charm.” His lips twitched in a sardonic smile. Leckie shook his head.

“I don’t have any of that,” he admitted. “I…”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. He had no idea what the sentence was supposed to be. Sledge’s hand lay on the bedspread between them, and Leckie interlaced their fingers, kissed the back of Sledge’s hand, and changed tactics.

“Who left?”

“Pardon?”

“My girlfriends have all left me. My high school girlfriend for some petty high school reason I don’t remember. Vera for reasons already discussed. Then my Aussie girlfriend, Stella, because her parents really liked me and she thought I was going to get killed. But other than that…” He shrugged. “I’ve always done the leaving. Every guy I’ve ever been with, I’ve turned tail at the first sight of emotional attachment. Then my friends—” He swallowed thickly. “I left them all. One on—one at the hospital. Hoosier and Runner got hit on Peleliu and I couldn’t get back to them so I just had to… and Chuckler…”

“I saw him,” Sledge said softly. “Getting evacuated on Peleliu. I felt awful—I recognized him but I didn’t remember his name.”

“He says he doesn’t hold it against us but I can never shake the thought that he has to. That’s never going to go away, no matter how hard I try. Sometimes the war sticks around and there’s nothing you can do about. Even my local friends, I _feel_ like I’ve left half of them even I couldn’t tell you when or why. It hurts, you know, it hurts even if I can’t think of how it could have been different.”

“Yeah, well,” Sledge sighed. “I’ve told you already, the other side’s not all fun and games, either.”

“Who left?” Leckie repeated. Sledge was silent, and for a minute Leckie didn’t think he was going to answer.

“Everybody,” he said eventually.

“Tell me.”

He bent down touched his lips to Sledge’s cheeks, his forehead, the delicate skin of his eyelids. Sledge squeezed his eyes shut and Leckie pressed a lingering kiss to the corner of his jaw. He didn’t know if he was allowed to do this—he was pretty sure they had just split up—but Sledge didn’t protest.

“Sid first,” he said. He swallowed. “And Sid second. Joined up without me. Rotated home. Never got to say goodbye. Then my captain and his lieutenant… everybody knew they were close, but I saw them one night, I saw the way they looked at each other, and then Ack-Ack, he… he touched him.” Sledge looked up, and for a moment, through the sadness, Leckie saw a look of wonder on his face that made his heart skip a beat. Sledge crooked his fingers and reached out, gently brushing his knuckles against Leckie’s jaw. “Just like this. I was so jealous,” he added with a watery laugh.

“What happened?”

“They died. One after the other. Lieutenant first… I was carrying his stretcher. Then the skipper just a few days later. When we got back—” He cleared his throat. “On Pavuvu, a buddy of mine… I told you about him. Jay De L'Eau.” He paused. “It was just—one night. On the beach. It wasn’t anything more than comfort, I guess—I mean I wasn’t—I don’t think I was ever in love with him. Didn’t get a chance to find out. He was transferred two days later. He was my first kiss,” he confessed with a sweet smile, and Leckie had the powerful urge to kiss him, too.

Sledge took a deep breath that ended in a great sigh.

“Then my buddy—we called him Snafu. Him I guess I was in love with.” He considered this for a moment, lips twisted in contemplation, and shrugged. “I don’t know. He drove me crazy.”

“Yeah, I think that’s love,” Leckie said with a stiff grin, trying to hide the sting of jealousy that had struck him.

“I guess. He was with me the whole time. Pavuvu, Peleliu, Okinawa, China… we fooled around a couple of times towards the end. I never—I never expected much, but when we were going home I thought we’d at least talk. I fell asleep on the train. He didn’t say a word to me before he left and nothing since. Leckie, it’s not him, either,” he added. “It’s not Sid, it’s not Snafu, it’s—I don’t know what it is. It’s just me.”

“Okay.” Leckie managed a grin. “So that’s it, then.”

“Yeah, Dr. Leckie,” Sledge smiled. “No more shrinking my head. Stick to the philosophy.”

“Okay,” he said with a soft laugh. Sledge’s hand was still curled against Leckie’s chest. “I… I wouldn’t have thought any less of you,” Leckie said in the quietest voice he could manage. Sledge’s fist tightened. “I only wanted… I would have taken care of you.”

“I should go back to the hotel,” Sledge said again, this time with a note of finality that made Leckie sigh.

“Okay.” He sat up and slipped off the bed, feeling around for his pants on the floor. “I can drive you—”

“I’d rather walk.”

“I’ll walk with you,” he said as he buckled his pants.

“Lucky…”

Leckie looked up and met his gaze. He swallowed.

“Okay,” he repeated. He cleared his throat. “Okay.” He hesitated for a moment, then bent to pick up his overshirt and pulled it on. He gave a courteous bow and held out his arm. “To the door, then.”

Sledge’s mouth twisted in an attempt to hide a grin, but he gave in. He dipped down in an elegant curtsy and took hold of Leckie’s arm. Together they maneuvered out the door, onto the landing, and down the stairs to the foyer below, trying to be quiet and flinching at each squeaky floorboard.

Leckie hesitated at the door. He inclined his head and paused, unsure whether he should offer a goodbye kiss or not. In the end it was Eugene who made the decision, turning his head and presenting his cheek. Leckie kissed him and lingered longer than he should have. Sledge opened the door behind him and turned sideways.

“I’ll see you around, Bob,” he said, but Leckie could tell from his expression that he didn’t mean it. Which was fine, because Leckie never would have believed it anyhow.

“See you.” But Sledge had hardly taken three steps before Leckie lurched forward, bracing himself against the doorway. “Hey,” he blurted. Sledge turned around and Leckie’s mouth fell open, but nothing came out. “Good night,” he said feebly.

“Good night.” Sledge lifted his hand in a little wave, and then he was gone, down the street without looking back.

Leckie stood where he was for a long, long time, slumped against the doorway and watching Sledge as he disappeared. He felt hollow inside. He looked across the street, hoping against hope that there would be a light on in Vera’s room so he could just—talk to somebody. Fuck, Sledge was still in Jersey for a day and a half and he’d have to explain why he wouldn’t be coming over for dinner. People would ask him how his friend was doing and he’d have to answer.

He was slow going up the stairs, which was all the better because he still needed to be quiet. He flopped down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. He wanted to think of nothing, to just wipe his mind and fall asleep, but his thoughts were unobliging. Over and over again Sledge’s words ran through his mind, crossing over each other and getting mixed up. Sledge had said Leckie was deluding himself, that he wasn’t really in love, that he had some kind of warped idea of who Sledge was, who _they_ were. Well, now he understood better, and it didn’t make him feel any different. He turned Sledge’s words over in his mind and felt the same protectiveness, the same longing, that had driven him to Mobile in the first place.

He should have explained, Leckie realized belatedly. He’d asked so many questions but he had never actually told Sledge what he had thought when receiving his letters. He had heard Sledge’s theory and accepted it because it was so similar to what Vera had said, and then he had gone on the attack instead of defending himself.

Leckie frowned at the ceiling. Something was bothering him. He sat up and lit another cigarette, and rested his elbow on his knee as he reviewed the conversation in his head again, start to finish. What had he actually _said_? Had he said a damn word in order to explain what he was thinking? No, he hadn’t; he’d focused all his energy on arguing about what Sledge thought instead.

He stood and strode up to the desk. He leaned against the chair with a furrowed brow, staring at his typewriter.

He needed to say something. The image of Sledge walking away, alone down the dark street, was branded in his mind, and he couldn’t let it end like that. He might be a jerk for pressing the issue, but Sledge had said it was a misunderstanding and he was right. And Leckie needed to make him understand. He sat down at the desk and put a clean sheet of paper into the machine.

_Dear Eugene,_

_As I’m typing this I realize the irony. You claim my letters don’t reflect how I really feel. I couldn’t defend myself in person tonight, so now I’m trying to do so in a letter. I know. Call me a cynic or a coward, but I just can’t say these things out loud. I’ve never been able to; I bet a good shrink would tell you it’s because of my family, whom you must have noticed by now is not very affectionate at the best of times, but all I can tell you is that when I see you and try to say the things on my mind, I stumble over the words or lose them entirely. I would rather you think me a charming joker than a fool, so maybe I let the important things go unsaid._

_If this isn’t enough for you, I understand. If you can’t bring yourself to believe this is the unqualified truth, then there’s nothing I can do about it, but I’m still going to write out this letter because I think you deserve to know that I_

Leckie stopped typing. He folded his hands and stared at the paper in front of him for a long minute. He had meant to type “how.” _You deserve to know how I feel_ , that was the sentence he had meant to type. He didn’t have any whiteout at home. His eyes flickered to the backspace key and he considered pressing it, but then he thought about Sledge reading this letter, looking at the small black Xs and trying to recreate the sentence.

No, Leckie decided. If he crossed anything out, he might as well throw the letter in the garbage. He took a deep breath and put his hand to the keyboard and typed out the rest of the sentence quickly, before he lost his nerve.

_I’m still going to write out this letter because I think you deserve to know that I love you._

He stopped typing again. He lit a cigarette and stared at the last few words until his heart rate ratcheted up to a dangerous speed, and then he pushed away from the desk and started to pace the room. He had never written a letter like this. All of the other letters he’d written to Eugene had been carefully filtered through a certain persona, and now he felt like wanted to sit back down and spill everything onto the page. The closest he’d ever done to that was his series of letters to Vera, when he had let himself talk honestly about the war, but even then he hadn’t intended to actually _send_ the letters.

After a few minutes he stopped across the room from the typewriter. He leaned against the wall and stared at it, thinking about Sledge, thinking about the touch of skin to skin and the moment they had both pulled away at the doorstep. His heart was aching.

Leckie crossed the room again and drew back the chair. Without thinking about it, he rested his fingers on the keys and started to type. He kept going for several long minutes, trusting on the lateness of the hour to keep his mother from barging into his room with complaints about the volume. He treated it like an exercise, a writer’s-block-breaking hurricane of words that wasn’t meant to be subjected to the nagging editor in the back of his brain. Only once did he stop, when he realized he was slipping back into the elegant ( _overwrought_ , Sledge’s voice teased) style of his previous letters. He bounced the stub of his cigarette between his lips, discarded it in the ashtray, inserted a quick apology into the letter, and kept going.

Finally, half an hour later, he had two and a half typewritten sheets of paper and heavy eyelids. Leckie glanced over the letter and decided he had rambled on for long enough. He considered it for a moment and added a closing paragraph.

_I’m running out of things to say. That’s something I don’t think has ever happened before, but this is a letter full of firsts. I’ll close by saying that I’m sorry for anything I said last night that was cruel, as I’m sure some of it was. I’d be more specific but it’s all confused in my mind now, and without sleep the thing I remember most clearly isn’t words but the look on your face, a look I’d like to never see again, certainly never to be the cause of._

_I know you said we shouldn’t try again, but that was before you knew how I really felt, so I’m asking you to reconsider. It’s terrible timing, with you going home so soon, but I promise that if you give me a chance, I’ll make the most of it. If not. . . take care, Scarlett._

_Yours always,_

He pulled the sheet out of the typewriter and signed _Robert Leckie_ at the bottom. He stared at the ink through glassy eyes, waiting for it to dry, then folded up the whole letter and stuffed it into an envelope, and wrote _E. Sledge, Room 312_ on the outside. He would drop it off at the hotel the next morning.

Then, finally, he fell onto his bed and was asleep before his eyes were fully closed.

\---

Leckie came home from work that afternoon and immediately went to the telephone. There was a notepad in the drawer that they used to record messages, but it was empty. He tried not to read too much into that, but he’d downed four or five cups of coffee and he felt wired. He shook his head and started to walk up the stairs, only to collide with an enormous ball of cream-colored linen.

“Ooof!” the ball said in his mother’s voice. “ _Robert…_ ”

“Ma, what are you doing?” he demanded, pressing his back to the wall so she could squeeze past.

“Changing the sheets in the guest room,” she said as if it were obvious. “They’ve been in there for months, since Margo was last home.”

“So?”

“So do you want your friend sleeping on musty sheets?” she chastised, and Leckie’s heart leapt into his throat. “He called this afternoon,” his mother continued as she reached the foot of the steps. “This morning he ran into a couple who had to change their travel plans at the last minute because of a family emergency. He called me and asked if we might have a spare bed, and I said of course, I raised eight kids in this house, of course we have room, and he’s giving them his hotel room and coming here instead. He’s really a nice boy, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Leckie managed, although he couldn’t really feel his face. “Yeah.”

He turned and ran up the stairs, two at a time, grinning like a loon.

\---

It was an excruciating night.

Sledge showed up promptly at six-thirty with his suitcase in hand. Leckie took it from him, heart pounding, and tried to have an entire conversation with his eyes before he took it upstairs, which was difficult because Sledge barely looked at him. Leckie deposited the suitcase in the guest room and then went back down to dinner. They were both unusually quiet during the meal—which Leckie’s sister made sure to point out, twice—but other than that, it went smoothly. He didn’t fight with his siblings or slip into sarcasm with his father. Sledge was able to put together cogent answers to his family’s questions, and ask a few interesting ones in return. Once, when Leckie’s leg was jiggling so much it threatened to make the table shake, Sledge put a hand on his knee, just for a second. That was the only intimate moment between the two of them all night. Leckie could feel his touch like a brand for the rest of dinner.

It had been the longest dinner of his life, but at the same time it passed like a whirlwind, and Leckie was shocked when his siblings and their spouses stood and started making their goodbyes—he couldn’t repeat a single word of the night’s conversation, and the quiet room gave him whiplash. They retired to the living room, next, to listen to the radio, but Sledge yawned several times and thank God Leckie’s mother picked up the hint, and they all went to bed.

Even so, Leckie sat in his desk chair and waited until almost ten o’clock before the noise from his parents’ room—the conversation, doors opening and closing, the faucet running—finally subsided. He gave it another half hour, and then he couldn’t take it anymore. He opened the door as quietly as he could and walked up to the guest room. He had barely brushed his knuckles against the door before Sledge called “Come in.”

Sledge was standing with his hands in his pockets, examining a family photo that hung on the wall. Leckie was eight years old in the photo—at that age he had never brushed his hair, so his mother had finally gotten fed up and cut most of it off. His hair was so short there wasn’t a hint of curl to it.

“This isn’t you, is it?” Sledge said, pointing. His eyes scanned the other faces, looking for an alternate. “Did you have another brother?”

“Yeah,” Leckie said. His mouth was dry. “I had two, but one died. That’s me in the picture, though.”

He wanted to explain more, tell the story of the haircut, but he couldn’t manage anything else. Sledge nodded thoughtfully. He took a deep breath and turned, and fully met Leckie’s gaze for the first time all night.

“I got your letter.”

“Good.”

They stared at each other. Sledge chewed on the corner of his lip.

“Nobody’s ever…” He swallowed. “Nobody’s ever written me a letter like that. Nobody’s ever said…” His eyes bore into Leckie’s. Leckie felt self-conscious, wanted to look away, but he forced himself to remain still. “Did you really mean everything you said? Do you really believe it?”

“Well, when I wrote it I may have been a little melodramatic,” Leckie said with a nervous grin. “In the light of day—so to speak—I’d probably use different language, shift around a comma or two—”

“ _Leckie_.”

“Yes,” Leckie said in a soft, serious murmur. “Every word.”

Sledge had crossed the room before Leckie even realized he was moving, and then they were kissing, gasping against each other like they couldn’t get enough air. Sledge had hooked one arm around Leckie’s neck and he felt so wonderfully solid. Leckie clung to him.

“’M sorry,” he said in a muffled voice. “I couldn’t—”

“No, forget it.” Sledge shook his head rapidly and hugged Leckie tight. “Let’s just—can we forget it?”

“Whatever you want,” Leckie vowed, kissing his neck. “We should—God, we should talk.”

“Sure,” Sledge agreed as he stepped back, pulling Leckie with him until they both fell on the bed.

“I mean it. Any chance—Jesus, you—there are other trains to Alabama, aren’t there?”

“I’ve got to get back to school,” Sledge said reproachfully. He was yanking at Leckie’s shirt with gusto, loosening the tiny buttons halfway and relying on force to do the rest. “We’ll talk.”

“Then maybe we should…” He kissed behind Sledge’s ear and slowly down his neck, and Sledge stopped undressing him in favor of lightly scratching the short hair at the back of Leckie’s hand and arching his neck.

“Slow down?” he suggested in an unfairly sensual voice. He wrapped a leg around Leckie’s waist.

“Slow down,” Leckie agreed, although he had never once disagreed with his own mouth so fervently. He drew back and kissed Sledge on the mouth, slow and deep.

“Why bother?” Eugene said. He touched Leckie’s cheek. He wasn’t smiling, but still his expression made Leckie’s breath catch. He looked—content. Comfortable. A sweet smile touched the very corner of his mouth. “We’ve got all night.”


	7. the current has us now

**July, 1947**

Leckie had always known Hoosier was annoying, but he hadn’t realized just _how_ annoying he could be until the Fourth of July.

He had taken advantage of his parents’ absence—they were visiting one of his sisters in New Hampshire—to throw the kind of high-spirited party they had long since declared too tiring, at their age, and it had been a really splendid barbecue. Vera had come, with a new idiotic handsome man on her arm, and so had Cindy with her newly acquired fiancé, and Denise, with her Bama Poly cousin. There was no shortage of out-of-towners, too: Chuckler and his fiancée Julie, Runner, Hoosier, Sid and Mary. And, of course, Sledge, who had come up not just for the holiday but for a two-week vacation.

They were all great company, and Leckie was surprised at how much he enjoyed playing host. They had eaten a late lunch and then sat around drinking, smoking, talking, and playing party games until the town fireworks at night. But the best part about most of the guests was that after that, _they left_. The whole group had gone to a park down the street to see the fireworks, and the locals all decided to head home right afterwards. The rest lingered for a little while. Leckie didn’t begrudge them that; it was the first time he, Hoosier, Chuckler, Runner, and Sid had seen each other all at once since the previous July. They all walked back to his house and sat in the living room.

“Now, Robert, you know I wouldn’t dream of trespassing on your hospitality,” Mary said, flapping her hand. “But is there any iced tea left? I swear, it’s almost as humid out there tonight as it is in Mobile.”

“For you, always,” Leckie said graciously.

“You’re a pet.”

“Why don’t you all talk to me that nicely, huh?” he admonished the men, and they booed and hissed as he got up to fetch the last pitcher of tea from the back of the fridge.

“Hey, you boys remember Guadalcanal?” Hoosier asked in a dreamy kind of voice when he set the pitcher on the coffee table.

“What kind of damn fool question is that, pardon my French?” Chuckler laughed. Julie elbowed him.

“Just thinkin’ of that night the Navy got blown to hell, and we sat there cheering ’cuz it looked like Fourth of July fireworks. God, we were morons.”

Leckie was in the kitchen, looking through the cabinets for clean glasses. All they had left were mugs and whisky glasses; he cradled them in his hand with a bittersweet smile. He remembered that night. It wasn’t funny yet, but he got the feeling it might be in a year or two. He brought the glasses back and set them on the table, too.

“Remember what we drank after that?” he asked, and was met by groans.

“Unsweetened ice tea?” Julie asked gravely.

“Not quite,” Chuckler laughed, and she shook his arm with a giggle. Julie had spent half the night giggling; they were a well-matched couple.

“What, then?”

“Japanese rice wine,” Sid said with a grimace. “Lord, that was not pleasant.”

“You drank in the middle of the campaign?” his wife asked, voice half scandalized and half amused.

“Well…” He looked to Hoosier for help, and patted Mary’s hand. “Well, darling, you see my way of thinking was that if you couldn’t fight someone drunk, then you really had no business fighting them at all.”

“Hear hear,” Hoosier said, raising his glass.

They sat around for a little while longer, but then Julie started to fall asleep on Chuckler’s shoulder, and the two couples decided it was time to head back to the hotel. They said their goodbyes at the door. Chuckler gallantly helped Julie into the rental car and then jogged back.

“Hey,” he said in a low voice. “What do you think?”

“Huh?” Runner asked.

“Julie,” he said, a smile tugging at his mouth. “You guys like her?”

“Yeah, of course,” he said. He looked around at Hoosier and Leckie. “Right?”

“Sure we do,” Hoosier nodded.

“She’s great,” Leckie said warmly. “The two of you are perfect for each other.”

Chuckler’s smile was blinding. He thanked them profusely and went out to the car, where Sid, Mary, and Julie were all waiting. Leckie closed the door and they all returned to the living room, where Eugene was contemplating his mug of iced tea.

“I want a beer,” he declared, standing up. “Y’all want a beer?”

“No, please, feel free to trespass on my kitchen whenever you like.”

“Thank you kindly, Leckie, you’re a real gentleman.”

“None for me, thanks,” Runner called. He yawned and dropped onto the couch. “Damn, I could fall asleep right now.”

“You know aside from Leckie, you’re the one who travelled the least to get here, right?” Hoosier said. “How could you be that tired.”

“Fuck you, Hoos, I can’t help it.”

Sledge came back with three bottles of beer, which he distributed, and Leckie suggested that they relocate to the back porch. The house had four bedrooms, but one was his parents', and another had been converted to a sewing room, with a couch instead of a bed. The boys had drawn straws when they first arrived, and Runner was going to be sleeping in the living room. They said their good nights and gave him some privacy.

A beer in the backyard was a fine thing. So was having a chat with friends. But fifteen, then twenty, then forty-five minutes slipped by, and Leckie hadn’t kissed Sledge all day, and his frustration was starting to grow. They made hints to Hoosier that they, too, wanted to go to bed, and tried to get him to admit that _he_ was tired, but it was all in vain. Leckie began to debate whether it would be more satisfying to just give up and kiss Eugene right then and there, or to strangle Hoosier with his bare hands.

As it turned out, the choice was taken out of his hands. 

“All right,” Sledge said with a yawn. He stood and stretched. “I’m calling it quits, boys. G’night.”

He shot Leckie one last lingering glance, and went back inside the house. Leckie watched him go, wondering how long he would have to wait before following.

“ _Finally_.”

“Excuse me?” Leckie asked, bemused, as Hoosier sat forward in his chair.

“I got a question for you. Been waiting to ask all night.”

Well, at least that explained his deliberate obtuseness.

“Shoot.”

“Are you fucking Sid’s wife?”

Leckie choked on his beer.

“Am I—? No! God, no! Jesus, Bill, they’ve only been married a year, and Mary’s crazy about him. They’re crazy about each other. What the hell are you doing, asking me a question like that?”

“Just checking,” Hoosier shrugged. “Alabama to New Jersey’s a long way to go, and Sid mentioned you’ve made the trip down there two or three times, too. Thought I’d ask. Follow-up question: are you fucking Sid?”

Leckie’s lips parted, but nothing came out except a faint whooshing sound. Hoosier was picking at the condensation-soaked label of his beer, but as the silence lengthened, he looked up. His eyes were piercing, but Leckie couldn’t detect any hostility—or maybe that was just wishful thinking on his part.

“That sounds like a yes to me.”

“It’s not,” Leckie countered in a brittle whisper. He cleared his throat. “No, I, uh. I’m not.”

“Okay, then it’s got to be what’s his face,” Hoosier said, gesturing towards the door with his bottle. “His little redhead friend, and practically speaking it’s more or less the same thing, so I get credit for that.”

He drained his beer with an air of triumph, and Leckie tried to remember how to breathe.

“How—how did you…?”

“Know about you? Oh, we’ve got mutual friends.”

“All of our friends are mutual.”

“We’ve got a mutual friend we met in the boonies, out behind those old latrines nobody ever used. He knew I knew you and asked if we were fucking, ’cuz he didn’t want to step on anybody’s toes. I said no, although I’d be lying if I said I haven’t considered it. By the way, I give better blowjobs than you.”

He sat there with a shit-eating grin, waiting for Leckie’s response. He felt a little dizzy, but even so a tiny voice was wondering if he was really _that_ surprised.

“Well—fuck,” he spluttered. “Why didn’t you _say_ anything?”

Hoosier raised his eyebrows. _Why didn’t you?_

“Well. Fuck.” He finished his beer and stood up. His fingers were twitching, and he swayed towards the kitchen to get another bottle. Then he caught the frame of the door and turned around. “Hey, do you—do you have anybody?” he asked awkwardly, in case it was rude not to ask.

Hoosier’s eyebrows seemed to get higher.

“Do I got a fellow?” he drawled. “Is that what you’re asking? No, I don’t. Folks like us don’t _do_ that, Leckie. We do behind-the-latrine blowjobs and farm boys who like a roll in the hay once every six months, that’s the kind of shit we get.”

“Huh.” Leckie considered this for a moment, and he couldn’t help the smug grin that touched his face. “I’ve got someone.”

“What, Sledgehammer? He’s your beau?” he taunted.

“Yeah, he is!”

“You always were a romantic, Bob,” Hoosier snorted.

“I mean it.”

Inexplicably he laughed, and he slumped back against the screen door. It was still hot as shit and his hair was limp with sweat. He pushed it out of his face and looked up at the sky. It was hazy with clouds, but at least they had held out for the fireworks. He lit a cigarette.

“Gimme one of those,” Hoosier demanded, and Leckie tossed him the pack.

“Eugene is—we’re good. We’ve been sleeping together for… eight months? Nine months? And we’ve been writing back and forth for even longer, and a couple months ago we had a talk, and we’re.” He chuckled and puffs of smoke bounced into the air. “We’re _going steady_.”

“Shit, Leckie,” Hoosier laughed. “Only you.”

He had been patting his pockets uselessly, but he gave up and stood. He strolled over to the doors and leaned forward so he could light his cigarette with the tip of Leckie’s.

“Izze good?” he mumbled around the cigarette.

“Oh, we’re not talking about that.”

“Oh we are,” Hoosier said with a hyena grin.

“Nope.”

“Come on, Lucky!”

“Put it this way—the fact that I’m standing here talking to you when I could be upstairs with him boggles my fucking mind right now.”

Hoosier punched his arm affectionately and they smoked in silence for a while.

“And you really think it’s gonna last?”

This last was said in almost an undertone—not mocking, although there was an attempt at levity that didn’t quite pass muster. Hoosier was looking up at him with a curious expression. The words were skeptical but the upward tilt of his mouth was fond.

Leckie’s instinct had been to offer a sharp retort, but he swallowed it back and looked up at the sky again.

“Shit, Bill, I hope so.”

He cleared his throat, but it did nothing to banish the rasp of his voice in the air.

“Ah, don’t worry about it. It ain’t shit.” Hoosier inhaled a lungful of smoke and exhaled slowly. “Gonna tell Runner and Chuckler?”

“Are you?”

“About what, me fucking Johnny Appleseed in the haystack? Fuck, no. But you’ve got a _beau_.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, who else knows?”

“Vera Keller,” Leckie chuckled.

“Shit.”

“Yeah. I didn’t even tell her, she _guessed_.” He considered it for a moment and shrugged. “Well, she knows, and so does Jay De L’Eau. He’s a—”

“Jay De L’Eau,” Hoosier said with a slow grin. “Shit, I know Jay De L’Eau.”

“He’s a friend of Sledge’s.”

“Yeah? He was a friend of mine way back in Melbourne, when the rest of you were making fools out of yourself over anything in a skirt.” He tilted his head. “Sledge got his address?”

Leckie shoved his arm.

“Why am I still here?” he wondered aloud. “I’ve got better places to be. Speaking of which, Sledge is in the more comfortable guest bedroom right now—the one with an actual bed—but if you want, I’m reasonably confident I could persuade him to spend the night in my room instead, and you can get off the sewing room couch.”

“Cheers, buddy.” Leckie patted him on the shoulder and turned to go inside, and Hoosier caught him by the sleeve. “Hey.” He paused. “I like him.”

Leckie swallowed. His heart felt like it was pounding somewhere in his throat.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I liked him okay before, in Alabama, but today he seemed more— and you seemed—” He shrugged. “I like him. You like him?”

“Yeah.”

“And he likes you.”

“Mm-hm.”

“You sure?”

“Okay,” Leckie snorted. “Good night, Hoosier.”

He stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray and went back into the house. Runner was snoring happily on the couch, so he went straight upstairs to the guest room. Eugene was sitting on the bed in his pajamas with a book. He looked up when the door opened.

“Hey. Is Hoosier—”

Leckie crossed the room in two steps and kissed him. 

Eugene was caught off guard; he didn’t kiss back at first, and then when he opened his mouth it was with a surprised laugh in the back of his throat. _Your letter made me_ _laugh_ , he had written last month, when this summer scheme had begun to pull together. _I can’t believe how much I laugh when I’m with you, even if I don’t always let on_. Leckie smiled into the kiss. He drew back slowly, and didn’t go far.

“That was nice,” Sledge said placidly.

“Thanks.”

“This whole day was nice. I know we didn’t get to talk much, but you put together a pretty good guest list. It was a fun day.”

“Yeah, it was,” Leckie agreed. He kissed him on the cheek and straightened. “Come on. You’re coming to my room.”

“Am I?” Sledge said, quirking an eyebrow. “And what does Hoosier think about that?”

“Jealous, probably,” Leckie grinned. “Remember when you told me I needed to make more gay friends? Well, it turns out I already have.”

“And it only took you six months.” Despite the sarcasm, there was a soft smile on his face, lit golden by the bedside lamp, and Leckie found himself staring. He cupped Sledge’s cheek in his hand and swiped his thumb back and forth, and Sledge reached up to hold his wrist loosely. “What?”

“Nothing,” Leckie mumbled automatically. He cleared his throat and looked down at the bedspread. This was going to sound cheesy, and he knew it. “I, uh… I like… talking about you. Just now, with Hoosier, I didn’t tell him much, but even so I—liked it. He likes you,” he added, meeting his gaze with a toothy grin. “He thinks you’re good for me.”

“I think I like Hoosier a little more than I did half an hour ago.” A frown flitted across his face, and he reached out to fiddle with the buttons of Leckie’s shirt. “I wish I could introduce you to more people. But Leonard’s all the way out in Colorado and Jay’s in California…”

“Hoosier will be disappointed.”

“What?”

“Forget it. He thinks I should tell Chuckler and Runner. Since we’re, you know. Serious.”

He half-expected Sledge to protest again, but he didn’t say anything. The corners of his mouth seemed to soften, and he shrugged one shoulder.

“Are you going to?”

“Not yet. I might… not yet.”

Sledge nodded. He was staring somewhere just below Leckie’s chin but he wasn’t really looking at him, and then he leaned forward for a kiss. Leckie’s eyes fluttered close and he tilted his head. His lips parted and he sighed happily—

There was a dry cough behind him.

“I was promised the room.”

Leckie pulled back half a centimeter.

“I did promise him the room,” he whispered. Sledge rolled his eyes.

“All right.”

He stood up and collected his things. As he turned to go, he paused and gave Hoosier a dignified nod, which Hoosier returned with a grin.

“Tell me something—is he good?” he asked, jerking his head in Leckie’s direction.

“Bill!”

“I’ve always wondered. ’Cuz he called me handsome one time, but I have it on good authority his blowjobs are half-hearted.”

“Where did you hear that?” Sledge asked.

“Some fellow on Parris Island.”

“Well, he must have had some practice since then.”

“We were _leaving_ ,” Leckie reminded him, and both men laughed at him as he put his hands on Sledge’s hips and gently shoved him out the door. His ears were burning.

\---

Three days later, Sledge had his first nightmare.

The Fourth of July guests had left and Leckie’s parents were still in New Hampshire, so they were alone in the house. He had been tossing and turning for hours, unable to get comfortable, and it took him a while to realize that Sledge had started to twitch, then squirm against the bedsheets. Leckie sat up and stared down at him, his heart pounding

He—he didn’t know what to do. Of all people, he should know what to do, but he’d never done this before, never had anything done for him, and he had no idea what to do.

“No,” Eugene whimpered suddenly. “No no no no no…”

“Eugene,” Leckie said. His voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat. “Eugene, hey, it’s okay…”

He touched Sledge’s shoulder and the other man flinched away, but Leckie couldn’t think of anything to do except touch him again, running his hand slowly down Sledge’s arm and clutching his hand. Maybe it was a coincidence but—Sledge quieted down, at least. A few more whimpers were trapped in the back of his throat but they remained there, muffled, instead of turning into fully formed words.

Sledge was still thrashing, though, so Leckie laid down on his side. He put one arm around Sledge’s waist and reached across with the other to stroke his arm, his cheek, as he kept up a quiet stream of soothing noises and the nonsense words people used to calm each other down. He wondered if he should wake him up, but…

But it seemed like Sledge’s distress was fading. The erratic movement of his limbs had subsided to the occasional shake, and he wasn’t making noises anymore. Finally he opened his eyes blearily and blinked at Leckie, but as quickly as that happened his eyes drifted shut again. He shifted closer with a yawn and fell back asleep. Leckie took a real breath for the first time in an hour—thirty minutes? ten?—and kissed the top of his head, and within minutes had joined him in sleep. It was better this way, he told himself, if they could manage it. Why cause either of them extra embarrassment by addressing the problem during wakefulness?

The next morning he woke up first. It was a Saturday morning, but even on Saturdays Leckie couldn’t sleep in; he was too used to an office schedule. Sledge, on the other hand, was taking full advantage of his vacation. He had yet to wake up before 10 am.

Leckie was surprised, therefore, when Sledge came up behind him as he was making coffee, only ten minutes later.

“Now what exactly do you think you’re doing?” he scolded.

“Good morning,” Leckie said as he turned around. He had already resolved to be cheerful and casual, but it took less effort than he had expected, because Eugene’s bedhead was hopelessly endearing. He grinned. “How’d you sleep?”

“I slept just fine,” Sledge brushed him off, but it seemed that he meant it. “Are you gonna answer my question or not? What are you doing out of bed?”

“Making coffee,” Leckie laughed. Sledge folded his arms and stepped forward.

“You forgot,” he accused.

“I didn’t.”

“You did.” He unfolded his arms and draped them around Leckie’s neck instead. “Last night, when you wanted to sleep and I wanted to go again, you promised you’d make it up to me.”

“And I will,” Leckie promised again. He kissed the tip of Sledge’s nose, which earned him a roll of the eyes.

“You promised you’d make it up to me, and I quote, tomorrow _morning_. Not tomorrow afternoon, or tomorrow night—tomorrow morning.”

“It’ll still be morning for quite some time,” Leckie chuckled. “We’ll get to it, don’t worry. I was going to make you breakfast first.”

“You can cook?” Eugene asked skeptically.

“ _Wow_.”

“I’m sorry,” he laughed, kissing Leckie’s cheek.

“No, no, no, I heard you loud and clear. And here I was trying to—”

“Luckyyy…” Sledge groaned. He kissed Leckie again twice, this time on the mouth so his indignant “do something nice” came out muffled.

“What’s for breakfast?” he asked, hanging on Leckie’s neck.

“Coffee. I was going to run out and pick up some donuts, but I didn’t expect you to be up so early. So, coffee, pancakes, with fresh strawberries or apple jam, ham, and eggs—scrambled or fried, your choice. And I guess we can go get donuts or bagels if you really want them.”

“No grits?”

“No grits.”

Sledge sighed dramatically and clicked his tongue.

“You know, where I come from, no respectable woman would even expect her man to eat ham and eggs without a side of cheesy grits.”

“Too bad I’m a Yankee bastard instead of a nice respectable Southern belle, huh?”

“Yeah,” Sledge smiled. “I think I like you anyway, though.”

“I appreciate the sacrifice,” Leckie murmured, and they kissed again. It was a chaste kiss, not the kind that would ordinarily leave them in danger of pursuing more, but his whole body was suffused with contentment, and that made it harder than usual to pull away.

It was no longer unusual to see Eugene in the mornings, but it was rare for them to be physically affectionate outside of the bedroom—they had still spent most of their time in the boarding house or Leckie’s house, often full of other people. Kisses had to be quick, quiet, and private, as a rule. But this, this lazy flirtation… this was nice.

“So are you gonna cook for me or what?” Sledge asked when Leckie was slow in drawing back, and he chuckled.

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Do you want all of that?”

“Mm… no, I’m not all that hungry. Pancakes and coffee sounds good, though.”

“Your wish is my command.”

Leckie turned back to the counter, and Sledge joined him, and they made breakfast together, Leckie cooking the pancakes and Sledge setting the table and cutting up a bowl of strawberries. After a few minutes Sledge started humming “Five Minutes More,” and Leckie joined in, but otherwise they were quiet. They were comfortable moving around each other, and Leckie was smiling to himself when they sat down, all thoughts of nighttime horrors erased.

Sledge dumped a spoonful of apple butter on his pancakes, at Leckie’s urging, and sighed when he took his first bite.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll give you this one.”

“Good?” Leckie grinned.

“Good. I can’t cook at all,” he mused as he cut into his pancakes. “My family’s always had a cook. Sid can, because he’s got a sister, so his parents had their cook teach Katherine some of the basics and they let him stay in the kitchen with her.”

“My mom had seven kids to cook for. If you didn’t help, you didn’t eat. Although my brother never had to do much, either; I think my sisters helped the most, and then by the time I could hold a knife without stabbing myself, my mother had gotten used to having plenty of help. My older sisters were moving out, or going out evenings on dates and whatnot, and I had to make up for it.”

Sledge nodded thoughtfully, and they resumed the meal in companionable silence. Leckie kept getting distracted, though, by the sight of Sledge, mussed and soft and happy. Ever since April there had been some intangible shift between them. They talked more than they had before. Sometimes their conversations were more serious, but even when they weren’t, there was still _something_ that Leckie couldn’t put his finger on. Their letters were less guarded, somehow, and when they met in person, there were often these pauses, content in a way he had never felt before. They had spent the last two days almost entirely alone, and he hadn’t expected how good it felt.

Eugene looked up curiously, and Leckie realized he needed to say something before his heart burst for no reason at all.

“What was the best meal you ever had?” he asked spontaneously. Sledge huffed out a laugh.

“Fishing for more compliments?” he teased.

“No, no. I mean—in general.”

“You’ve been asking all kinds of questions like that,” Sledge noted. “Best meal you ever had, favorite holiday as a kid, top vacation destination… what’s it all about?”

“No reason,” Leckie shrugged. Then he paused and answered more honestly, the words coming out slow. “I... want to know more about you. We’ve known each other for over a year now, and... I want to know everything. Call it part of my commitment to—you know, to talking. Being open.”

Sledge considered him for a moment, and a small smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

“All right. Favorite meal. Best food or best company?”

“Either. Both.”

“All right.” Sledge took a sip from his coffee. “Okay, I’ve got it. When I was fifteen, I got really sick with the flu. I didn’t get out of bed for two weeks, didn’t eat anything except broths. My dad was worried it might be the same kind of virus as the Spanish flu outbreak, a couple decades late, so my parents were worried I might die. And then one day, I just got better. The first thing I said was that I was starving, but my father wanted to be careful because I couldn’t keep anything down for so long. First meal—plain rice cooked in broth. Second—oatmeal. Third—a single biscuit with sausage gravy. And that night, I was allowed to get out of bed and actually have dinner.”

Sledge shook his head.

“Lord almighty. We had roast turkey with cornbread stuffing, fried squash, andouille sausage with rice and okra, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and corn… and the whole time my dad’s telling me to slow down, so instead of making myself sick again, I actually got to enjoy it  all. And for dessert, my momma made pecan pie and gave me a big scoop of vanilla ice cream, too. My mother cried at one point, and I think my father looked a little misty-eyed, too. At the time, I was embarrassed—I thought they were overreacting. But I guess they really thought I might…. Anyway. That was the best food I ever tasted.”

“You were sick a lot when you were young, weren’t you?” Leckie commented. He was sure this wasn’t the first time he’d heard about a childhood illness.

“I guess,” Sledge shrugged. “I had asthma when I was a kid, but that cleared up when I got older, and I’ve got this heart murmur that comes and goes every few years. Those were the only long-term problems. The rest was just plain bad luck—a couple of broken bones, the flu two or three times. Polio-free, though,” he added with a smile.

He speared the last strawberry on his fork, then pushed his plate aside and leaned forward on his elbows.

“What about you?” he asked. “What was your favorite meal?”

“I was sixteen,” Leckie began with a bittersweet smile. This story was nice in hindsight, but God, he’d been a stupid kid. “I decided I was going to run away. My brother and his wife had moved back in with us, three of my sisters were still living here, and I wanted out. So one Sunday I told my mother I wasn’t going to church, I was going into school to work on the paper. I had meant to leave right away—”

“Where were you going to _go_?” Sledge interrupted.

“New York. I think I had some idea of working my way up to writing for the _Times_ , that maybe I could cobble together a bunch of articles for different papers, use a pseudonym so no one realized I was a kid, and make it big. I had enough allowance to get a bus ticket and a few nights in a hotel, and it was 1936 so I would hardly be the only one in the city scraping by on nothing. I meant to leave right away, but once everybody left for mass, I realized I liked having the house to myself. So I stayed for an hour, and then I thought I really _should_ work on the paper for a while, so I went to school for a few hours. Then I walked to the bus station, but I kept stalling, and then it was getting late, so I just… went home. It was almost nine by the time I got back to the house. My parents were furious. My mother told me she’d saved a plate for me, but that I shouldn’t get used to it, because she expected me to be on time for dinner from now on.”

“Cold leftovers was the best meal you ever had?” Sledge asked skeptically.

“That’s the thing.” Leckie paused. “I still don’t know why she did this. How she knew. But, see, my mom _always_ made roast beef with steamed beans and mashed potatoes for Sunday dinner. Always. She still does, as a matter of fact. But that night, when I got home, she put down a plate of shaved ham and scalloped potatoes and brussel sprouts, all my favorites—”

“Brussel sprouts?” Sledge interrupted again.

“Shut up. She let me have a Coke with dinner, too, which was never allowed, and she had set aside a slice of cake, which was worth its weight in gold in our house back then. There was _never_ leftover cake. Anyway. Like I said, I don’t know how she knew, but that was the meal that made me really happy to be home.”

“Yeah,” Sledge said quietly. Slowly, deliberately, he rested his hand on top of Leckie’s and squeezed his fingers. “Second best was VJ Day,” he mumbled. “Spam and bacon, white rice, oranges. And a couple of sips of Johnnie Walker.”

“A cup of real coffee after Guadalcanal,” Leckie replied in kind. “And then after Gloucester, I uh… I got sent to a hospital.” He bit his lip and added, “On Banika,” as casually as he could, but if the word meant anything to Sledge, his face didn’t show it. “They had hamburgers and fries. It was good but I felt like I couldn’t enjoy it as much, knowing Sid, Hoosier, Chuckler, and Runner were all still on Pavuvu.”

Sledge’s thumb slipped back and forth over the top of Leckie’s wrist.

“Is this a bad time to say I love you?” he asked absently, and Leckie couldn’t breathe.

“No,” he croaked. He cleared his throat and a laugh bubbled up. “No, I—why would it—?”

“I don’t know,” Sledge shrugged, smiling to himself, eyes lowered to the table, to their joined hands. “It’s an odd time, middle of breakfast… and I don’t have any real reason, I just…” He looked up and shrugged again. “Love you,” he finished.

“I love you, too,” Leckie grinned. “And this… I can’t think of any better time.”

Sledge stood up from the table and kissed Leckie’s forehead.

“Me neither.”

He squeezed Leckie’s shoulder and strolled out of the kitchen, towards the stairs and Leckie’s bedroom at the top. Leckie sat still for a moment, soaking in his own delight, and then leapt up and chased after him.


	8. I cocoon 'round your shoulders

**November, 1947**

It started with rain. They always started with rain. It started with rain that turned into sporadic rifle fire, then continuous machine gun fire, then rain so loud it drowned everything out and he couldn’t tell what was happening, rain with taunting percussive bursts of gunfire he couldn’t trace, a perfect counterpoint to the shadows in the jungle flickering in the corner of his vision and the ominous glint of light against bayonet blades.

 _“Fucking shoot me already!”_ he wanted to scream, and _“Why can’t you give up, goddamnit?”_ and _“I just want to go home”,_ but he couldn’t tell if any words were escaping his lips at all, until, unexpectedly, there was a reply.

“ _Bob!_ Bob, come on now, wake up, wake up, it’s only—”

Leckie gasped and yanked his arm back—someone was holding onto his wrist, and his legs were bound, and he couldn’t see anything—he scrambled backwards and hit a wall behind him, and only then did he realize that he was lying down on something soft and dry, and his legs were free, and….

Slowly his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He hadn’t been able to see because it was late at night, or very early in the morning, and the curtains were drawn with only a faint grey light from the moon filtering through. Just enough for him to ascertain that he was in a hotel room, and that Eugene was staring at him.

“Fuck.”

He hated the way the word came out—watery, twisted, _weak_ —and he pushed himself away from the middle of the bed, swinging his legs over the edge.

“Leckie, you were having—”

“I _know_.”

“It’s ok—”

“ _Don’t touch me_.” Sledge had just barely touched his hand to Leckie’s back, and he froze for a moment before lowering it to the bedding again. Leckie’s heart was still careening wildly but a hazy sense of shame intruded on his confusion. This didn’t have to be a big deal—Sledge was overreacting. But so was he. “Give me a minute,” he said, struggling to make his voice gentle. He didn’t think he succeeded, but Eugene didn’t remark on it.

“Okay,” he said quietly.

They sat still for a moment. Their watches were both ticking, out of time with each other, and Leckie could hear his own breathing, coming faster and rougher the longer he sat still. His hands gripped the edge of the bed so tightly that the sheet began to pull away. He squeezed his eyes shut and hunched his shoulders, trying to get himself under _control,_ goddamnit—and then he felt the soft touch of Sledge’s lips against the back of his neck.

The touch sparked tears in the corner of his eyes, and propelled him off the bed. He hadn’t gotten dressed before falling asleep, and he wanted to get out of the room as fast as possible. He yanked his trousers on and slipped his overshirt over his head, still half unbuttoned.

“Leckie, don’t—”

“Leave me alone,” he snarled.

“Bob,” Sledge pleaded. He scrambled out of bed and grabbed Leckie’s shoulder. “Come on, we said we’d be better about this—”

“Fuck you,” Leckie snapped.

He shoved his feet in his shoes, bypassing the socks entirely, and snatched his jacket off the chair in the corner. Sledge didn’t follow him when he wrenched open the door, and Leckie let out a sigh of relief that turned into a choked sob. _No_ , he thought sternly, and he marched down the hall. Thankfully, the halls and the hotel lobby were empty, and by the time he burst out of the front door into the night, his breathing had returned to normal. He exhaled and ran his hands through his hair, feet meandering in a loose circle that took him away from the entrance but nowhere in particular. Alabama in November—it had been just like this the first time he came down. Not freezing, not nearly as cold as Jersey, but there was a faint wind that tickled his hair and cooled the sweat clinging to his skin, for which he was grateful. After a minute Leckie was able to look up, survey his surroundings, and shake off the horrible trapped feeling that had still been clinging to his limbs.

Sledge was going to hate him.

With a lump in his throat, Leckie leaned against the whitewashed brick of the hotel wall and drew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket with shaking hands. He should have said something earlier when he had the chance. Or—or he should have gotten over this by now. He had been out of combat for longer, he was older, and he had promised Eugene he would take care of him, and now here he was, falling apart instead.

The thought made his throat tight again, so Leckie hastily lifted his lighter to his mouth. His hand was bobbing up and down, but he was able to touch it to the end of the cigarette. He flicked his lighter twice—no spark.

“Fuck you, c’mon,” he muttered, yanking on the wheel again. This time he could see the flash as the metal scraped against the flint, but no flame appeared. “God damn it.”

“Here.”

The night was so quiet that the scrape and soft whoosh of a lighter being lit were clearly audible. Leckie turned towards it, moth to the flame, and wasn’t entirely surprised to see Sledge’s face illuminated in the darkness.

“Thanks,” he said dully, and turned away to lean against the wall again. Sledge stayed put.

“Was this the first time you’ve had one of them?” he asked in a careful, neutral voice. Leckie shook his head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why do you think?” Leckie asked bitterly. His hand shook as he exhaled and brought the cigarette back to his lips.

“I mean—” Sledge’s voice was strained. He took a deep breath and pressed on. “I mean why didn’t you tell me once you knew I got them?”

Leckie didn’t have an answer. He continued to stare at the pavement beneath his feet, and then the tips of two brown shoes appeared in his line of vision. Sledge touched his cheek.

“Don’t,” he mumbled, knocking him away. “Someone’ll see.”

“Lucky, it’s two AM on a Wednesday in Mobile. Nobody’s gonna see.”

He put both hands on Leckie’s cheeks. Leckie let him, but he kept his head bowed and didn’t say anything. Eugene touched their foreheads together and let out a weary sigh.

“I do not understand you, Robert Leckie. One minute you’re telling me off for not being open with you and saying we need to trust each other more, and the next… Why is it it’s okay for me to be a mess and not you, huh? Why can’t you let me take care of you the way you say you want to take care of me?”

“That’s not—it’s not…”

“It’s ’cause I’m the sissy, isn’t it?” Sledge smiled. “Knew I shouldn’t’ve let you call me Scarlett.”

“No,” Leckie protested, and he laughed despite the fact that laughing threatened to shake loose the tears in his throat. “No, that’s not it.”

“Well then what?”

“I want—” He started. He swallowed and started over. “I used to piss myself when we were on Gloucester. First the doc said it was just the rain, then we got the fuck out of there and it kept happening so they sent me to this—hospital. On Banika. The shrink there said I was just tired and I could go back, but it was only after I asked him. He said—he said if it was peacetime, he’d want to talk more. I can’t help wondering what he might have seen…”

“Honey, you know those doctors think everyone’s a little crazy,” Sledge said, rubbing his shoulder vigorously. “It’s nothing against you.”

“Isn’t it?” Leckie demanded. “I _signed up_ —I was fifth in line at my recruiting station—”

“Lots of people signed up, I don’t see—”

“—and I don’t even know why I did it! I’m not like you, Eugene, I don’t have family in every war going back hundreds of years, and half the time if I think about it, if I _really_ fucking think about it, I think I signed up so my parents could finally be proud they had a younger son.”

Sledge looked taken aback. His lips parted in surprise but he had nothing to say, and his eyes fell to the ground.

“Yeah,” Leckie said bitterly. “It’s stupid. I’m a grown man and I still can’t get over—they never beat me, never let me go hungry, never even forgot to pick me up from school or anything trivial like that, and I still felt bad for not getting a hug at the train station. Pathetic. And you know what? When I got back, they didn’t give a shit, and neither did anybody else. Nobody knows where I was, nobody knows what I was there for, nobody knows what I did there. And I came back even more fucked up than before, and I just wanted—I wanted _you_ —”

He gave a watery laugh and now it was his turn to hold Sledge close, putting his hands on either side of his neck and bending his head down.

“I wanted _you_ to be proud of me,” he said in a voice barely more substantial than a whisper. “I know, I know you went through it, too… but I guess some part of me’s never given up on the way you first looked at me, when you were the new boot and I was—someone to be admired.”

Eugene was clasping his wrists in his hands and kissing him, light kisses that brushed against his cheek, his nose, his lips and his jaw like leaves buffeted by the summer wind. Leckie kept his eyes shut and knew it would only be a matter of time before the tears streaming from them overwhelmed him again. Still he kept talking, because if he _had_ to talk, he might as well make Sledge understand.

“I think I was supposed to die,” he confessed.

“No—”

“I really do, I think—”

“What do you mean saying a thing like that?” Sledge admonished, smoothing over Leckie’s hair.

“After that first firefight on Guadalcanal…” His voice came out hoarse and he swallowed again. “There was this Jap. Last one alive. They hemmed him in. He started shouting. Not—not screaming, just shouting. He knew he was trapped. And they kept… they kept shooting at him, and missing just enough to keep it going, picking pieces of him off at a time until he was crying. Finally I couldn’t watch it anymore. Finished him off quick. That’s what this fuckin’ war was doing to me, to all of us, carving us away bit by bit. Sometimes I fought it, and sometimes… on Gloucester, I wanted it. I wanted it to be over. Sometimes I think I’m still—”

He broke on the word _waiting_. The tears came hard and fast, but his sobs were muffled against Eugene’s shoulder. Sledge clutched at him, his arms around Leckie’s back and his hands combing through his hair. Leckie wasn’t ready to be comforted yet, but God it felt good to be able to tuck himself against the other man’s body and pretend he could be protected there. Sledge’s voice was constant, too, a soft stream of words pouring around him.

“You’re okay, sweetheart, you’re okay—”

“I’m—” He could only mouth the word not, but he shook his head and Sledge seemed to get the gist.

“You _will_ be,” he promised. “You’ll be okay, Leckie, everything’s going to be all right… I love you,” he said in a firm voice. “I love you and I’m right here and you’ll be okay. We’re gonna be okay.”

Leckie had no idea how long he cried. Sledge never rushed him, nobody ever passed them, there wasn’t so much as a distant church bell to tell time by. The tears stopped coming, eventually. For some minutes afterwards he remained where he was, deadweight leaning against Eugene, but the smaller man didn’t complain. After a while Leckie heard him yawn, and he straightened.

“You’re tired,” he observed. His voice was hoarse.

“A little.”

“Do you want to go back…?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Sledge slipped his arm through Leckie’s elbow and started to guide him back to the hotel. Leckie planted his feet and Sledge looked up at him, concern still written plainly across his face.

“I meant back to your house,” he explained. “If you want—”

“No,” Sledge said immediately. “No, I want to stay with you.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to get back to sleep.”

“Okay. That’s okay, we’ll make some coffee.”

“No, you should—” Leckie swallowed, and consciously softened his voice. Sledge had to know he was being sincere about this. “I don’t want you to stay up for me,” he said gently, brushing a thumb over Sledge’s cheek. They were treading dangerous ground, now, illuminated by the glow coming from the window in the hotel’s door, but he couldn’t stop touching the other man just yet. Sledge regarded him for a moment.

“Okay,” he repeated slowly. “But you—you won’t leave, will you? I mean if I fall asleep and you’re still up, promise me you won’t go for a walk, or out for breakfast or anything like that.”

What he meant was _promise me you won’t get a 6 o’clock train ticket out of Mobile and be gone before I wake up_ , and they both knew it, but neither of them were going to say it.

“I promise.”

\---

Eventually Leckie did manage to fall asleep out of pure exhaustion. At 6:30 AM he woke with a start, sitting upright in a hotel armchair. He couldn’t remember any nightmares but there was a bitter taste in his mouth. He walked over to the bed and watched Sledge sleep for a few moments with his stomach churning. Tears started to prick at his eyes again and he knew he had to go. He needed to breathe.

Yet, mindful of his promise, he didn’t go far. It was a weekday, so the dining room on the ground floor was already faintly buzzing with men who had traveled to Mobile for business. Leckie was still in his suit from the day before and he felt shabby next to all that neatly pressed linen, but he avoided eye contact and sat down. A porter appeared with a cup of coffee and a paper, both of which he accepted. He did his best to read the paper but the words were like Morse code, blurry dots and dashes of ink that made no sense in his mind. Still, Leckie stared at the front page for a while, and then the second. Halfway down the third he finished his coffee and folded the paper up. The same porter was at his elbow, refilling the cup, before he had even set the paper aside.

“Can I get another cup, please?” he asked in a gravelly voice. From the way the porter looked at him—equal parts sympathetic and scornful—Leckie knew the man thought he had the worst hangover of his life, which didn’t feel all that inaccurate.

“A fresh cup? Of course, sir,” he said, obsequious to a sarcastic degree.

“No, no, this one’s fine. I mean another cup to take up to my room.”

“Of course, sir,” the porter repeated. “And of course, if you have a guest, sir, he or she is welcome to join you for breakfast, too.”

Leckie chose not to respond to that. The porter returned momentarily with a second cup, and Leckie returned to his room. He paused outside the door and frowned down at the mugs. He had taken a sip from his, so there was an inch of safety at the top, but Sledge liked milk and sugar, and his mug was full to the brim. This would be tricky. Carefully, Leckie transferred his own cup to his right hand, clinging to it with just two fingers looped through the handle, dug his key from his pocket, and reached for the door. Before he could open it, though, the door burst open by itself and almost sent him and his coffee flying.

“Shit!” he blurted out as coffee splashed onto his hand—thankfully not scalding hot, because of the milk—and Sledge flushed.

“Oh,” he said. “I—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—sorry.”

“What was that for?” Leckie asked, bewildered. Then it clicked. “You didn’t think—”

“Well, you promised to stay put and then you didn’t say put,” Sledge said, twitching his shoulder in a shrug.

“I didn’t expect you to be up this early, and I only went downstairs. And besides, I brought you a coffee.”

“Oh,” Sledge repeated as Leckie held it up. “Thank you.” He accepted it and they stood awkwardly in the hallway for a moment. Sledge gestured at the stairs. “We could go back,” he suggested. “Get some real breakfast?”

“Not here,” Leckie shook his head. “The porter thinks I’m a drunk and you’re a female prostitute.”

“He does _not_.”

“He absolutely does.”

“Fine. Bernie’s down the street does good breakfast. Mind if I brush my teeth first?”

“By all means.”

They returned to the hotel room, neatened up, and drank their coffee, and then Sledge led the way to Bernie’s Diner. There was an eclectic mix of customers—both a Negro section and a white one, populated by as many maids and doormen in uniform as men in suits. It started raining just before they ducked inside, and when they took a seat at a booth by the window it was really pouring, making a waterfall of the awning and a river of the street.

“That’ll be fun going out in,” Sledge commented.

“We’ve suffered worse,” Leckie said wryly.

“The health of the Corps is only as strong as the health of the individual marine… sorry,” he laughed when Leckie raised his eyebrows. “Did you ever know Gunny Haney?”

“Nope.”

“Sure you did. Whenever there was thirty seconds of rain on Pavuvu he’d jump out, naked as the day he was born, and start washing his equipment.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down much, Gene.”

Sledge grinned, and the waitress appeared at his side. Leckie hadn’t had a chance to glance at the menu, but there were only two choices he had to make: how he wanted his eggs, and whether he wanted his biscuit with honey or jelly, or gravy for 15 cents more. They deliberated for several seconds, gave their order, and were presented with an astonishing amount of food five minutes later. Leckie poked at his sausage half-heartedly; his stomach was squirming, and he couldn’t decide if eating would alleviate or exacerbate the problem. He was waiting for Sledge to say something that mattered, and the longer the moments dragged on the more he dreaded what he might say.

“Bob, I’ve been thinking…” Sledge halted. Leckie closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “This might be out of left field. Would you ever think about moving to Auburn?”

Leckie wrenched his eyes open and his jaw dropped.

“What?”

“Just a suggestion,” Sledge said, feigning nonchalance as he scooped up a forkful of scrambled eggs. “The boarding house has been feeling more cramped lately, so I was thinking of looking for something else. As for you, well, I have this theory that you’ll like like your parents a whole lot more when y’all aren’t living in each other’s pockets. And based on what you’ve said about New Jersey, it just doesn’t seem like you’ve got a lot tying you there. Change of scenery might do you good.”

“So you think I should move in with you?”

“That’d be the idea, yeah. And I know you’ll be leaving people behind, Vera and folks, and it’s further from Hoosier and the others, but I figure it’s only a little more than two years, and after that we can figure something out. And if you don’t like it, I won’t hold it against you if you want to move back earlier. There’s no harm in trying, right?”

He looked up and for a moment the mask slipped a bit. This whole conversation was bizarre, and Sledge knew it. He was abashed that he was even bringing it up.

“Why?” Leckie asked once he found his voice.

“I just told you why.”

“No, I mean— _why_? After last night—”

“Last night doesn’t change a thing,” Sledge said sharply.

“Of course it does!” Leckie snapped. “Christ, Sledge, it’s no use pretending it didn’t happen. This isn’t like with you, where you can sleep through it and not remember the next morning. This is—it’s _pathetic_.”

At the mention of his own nightmares, Sledge paled, but he stood his ground.

“Do you remember how it felt when you found out about me?” he asked quietly. “Or the first time I had a nightmare in front of you—whenever that was—did you think I was pathetic?”

Leckie changed tactics. He took a deep breath and attempted a smile.

“You don’t understand,” he said in a patient voice, resting his hand on the table between them. “It’s different. Okay? Our situations—they’re completely different.”

The look Eugene gave him was equal parts sympathy and exasperation. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small, battered, long-suffering New Testament. There were several pieces of loose paper tucked between its pages, and he pulled out a folded sheaf, much less tarnished than the rest. He cleared his throat and leaned forward, speaking in a low voice that couldn’t be overheard.

“ _The wonderful thing about being with you is that you understand_ ,” he read. “ _I feel like I can talk to you about anything. But even more than that—I don’t have to tell you everything. Often you bring up something in your letters that I want to address, but then I see you in person and suddenly it seems insignificant. I don’t need to hear you confirm your thoughts because I know them already. I don’t need to resort to melodramatic words to make you understand my woes, because you understand them better than I could explain. All I want to do is hold you, touch you, do all the things I can’t when there is so much space between us. If you think we need to talk more, I understand. I’m willing and eager to practice—the solution, I think, is proximity, not separation._ ”

He folded the letter neatly and slipped it between the pages of the Bible again, and Leckie swallowed. His throats felt bone dry. He remembered that letter. He’d written it in a late-night fog of exhaustion seven months ago, but he remembered every word.

“Why do you carry that around?”

“Habit, at this point. Honestly I’ve probably memorized the damn thing already. Do you still believe that?”

“I don’t know what you want from me.”

The words came out harsher than he intended, and they stared at each other in silence, with the rain pounding rhythmically against the window. Leckie broke eye contact first, tilting his head and staring out at the rain. It was coming down in sheets, endless Gloucester rain, except the blurred background was slate grey instead of jungle blue and green.

“Nothing,” Eugene said finally. “I don’t want anything from you. But I need a decision, and I need it to be based on what you think of me, not whatever you think I should want, or what _you_ should want or what you should be. We’re past that, Lucky. Aren’t we?”

Leckie turned to look at him again, and swallowed past the lump in his throat. The truth is, they’d been past that for a long, long time. Maybe since Pavuvu, even, when Leckie had come back from the hospital full of laughter and jokes and gifts, with his doubts buried deep inside until one night when for no reason at all he had decided to let them all pour out. Just because Sledge had listened, and instead of brushing him off, instead of saying _sheesh, what a buzzkill_ or _what the hell is wrong with you?_ , he had just asked a simple, matter of fact question. _What do you believe in?_

He had thought it was unbearably naive, then, that this new boot thought men could still believe in something during war. But shit, Leckie had never been able to shake that idea, either.

His eyes traced Sledge’s face, like he had examined his portrait months ago, wondering if he looked happy. He didn’t look happy now; he looked worried and hopeful, and bitter about being hopeful. But he looked like he had lived through a year and a half of war, and a year and a half of peace, and concluded that both were survivable. He looked like he still believed in something, and all at once Leckie realized that Sledge believed in _him_.

He sat back in his seat and took a deep breath. He forced himself to draw it in, and to swallow the _I can’t do this_ that threatened to claw its way out of his mouth.

“Okay,” he croaked. Sledge went still.

“Okay what?”

“How y’all doing?” the waitress asked cheerfully, making an astonishingly ill-timed appearance, and Sledge looked at her like she had just run over his dog.

“Doing fine, thanks,” he said in a curt voice, but the waitress was looking at Leckie’s plate.

“Everything okay, hun? You’ve barely touched your grits.”

“I’m not a huge fan of ’em, to be honest,” he said, clearing his throat. He leaned forward and briefly met Sledge’s eyes before dropping his gaze to the pile of corn mush. “But I guess I’ll have to adjust, since I’ll actually be moving down here pretty soon.”

“Well, this is a good place to start, honey. Bernie makes the best grits this side of the Mississippi.”

“I bet.”

The waitress whirled off to wait on another table, leaving silence in her wake. Leckie looked up and was almost blinded by the radiance of Eugene’s smile. The corner of his mouth was twisted as he tried to fight it, but there was no holding back.

“Well,” he said in a mild voice. “I guess that’s that.”

“I guess it is.” He wanted to reach for Sledge’s hand. He reached for his coffee cup instead, and took a sip. It was hot and fresh, and sitting beside the window with the rain coming down in sheets, it was perfect. A happy sigh escaped him. “This, uh… this might be better than Guadalcanal,” he admitted.

It took Sledge a minute to understand, but when he did, he chuckled and held up his own cup.

“It’s up there.”

They clinked their mugs together and returned to their breakfast.


	9. where to begin?

**March, 1948**

Leckie stepped out of the car into the sunshine and couldn’t help but smile. It was a beautiful day and he was happy for the chance to stretch his legs; it had been a long drive. The car was packed with boxes, but he didn’t move to take any of them. Instead he leaned against the hood of the car and surveyed the house in front of him. It was a quaint little cottage, one floor with an attic addition. The walls were cream-colored, the shutters slate, and the door a bright emerald green.

The best part of the house, though, was the porch, with its porch swing, and the red-haired man currently sitting in it. He was pushing himself back and forth with one foot, his nose buried in a book—although it seemed to Leckie that his eyes were remarkably motionless, and there was a hint of a smile on his face.

Leckie grinned, too. He took a small package from the front seat of the car and mosied down the lawn path.

“Hey, Scarlett O’Hara!” he called. “What’s happening?”

“You know, people got manners down here,” Eugene drawled. He closed his book, keeping his thumb in the page, and looked up. “We call each other by our right names, and wait for an invitation before barging in someone’s home.”

“Do you?” Leckie asked. He mounted the steps and leaned against the porch fence. “Here I thought you folks were all about hospitality.”

“Within reason.”

“Hmmm.” Leckie furrowed his brow dramatically. It was hard to keep from beaming, after almost two months apart, but he did his best. “What if I brought gifts?” he asked. “Does that even the score a bit?”

“Oh, that’s a whole ’nother story.” Sledge sat up all the way and put his book aside, and flung out a hand. “Let me see.”

“Patience,” Leckie counseled, but the admonishment fell on deaf ears; the moment he sat down, Sledge was snatching the package from his hands. He clucked his tongue, and Sledge smiled and folded his hands in his lap.

“May I?”

They held each other’s gaze for another minute, communicating primarily via eyebrow twitches, and if they had been inside, this would be the moment that Leckie kissed him. He leaned back to eliminate the temptation, and gave an imperious nod. Sledge tore off the paper to reveal two black-bound books.

“Recognize those?” Leckie asked, unable to keep a pleased grin off his face.

He couldn’t see Sledge’s expression—his head was bent as he examined the present—but he could tell from the way he handled the books that he knew where they had come from. His hand caressed the cover of the first, pale fingers spread out to cover it edge to spine.

“These are from your library,” he marveled. “How the hell do you still have these?”

“I didn’t. After we left Pavuvu, the quartermaster took it over. He seemed to think it would be okay to go through my personal private things as long as he kept the catalogue going—”

“It was a  _library_ , Lucky.”

“For which I have forgiven him wholeheartedly,” Leckie said virtuously. “Anyway. He sent me some once the war ended. The ones that managed to hold up in that climate. The softcover ones are long gone, but that one held up okay. I remember you said you liked Kipling.”

“I do.” Sledge set the book aside and finally looked up with a smile. “Thank you.”

“Did I ever tell you how that whole thing got started?”

“No, I don’t think you did.”

“I brought a few books with me to boot camp. I had… Alexander Pope’s translation of  _The Iliad_ , selected poems of Dylan Thomas, selected poems of Robert Frost and… I think it was  _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court_. I was on a Twain kick a while back but I don’t remember which one I had with me. Anyway, I lost that one at boot camp, or someone snatched it. I picked up some more in Melbourne, a couple of books and some magazines and comic books, and then after Gloucester I went to Banika.” He noticed in the back of his mind that he wasn’t tripping over the word anymore. “You know Banika, right?”

Sledge nodded.

“Well, yeah, I went there for a while, and came back with some more books. By that point everyone was sick of everything they had and we started to trade, and soon enough I had a library going. I don’t remember where the Kipling came from, though.”

“I do.”

A wry smile tugged at the corner of Sledge’s mouth, and before Leckie’s disbelieving eyes he held up the book and turned to the cover page, three pages in. Leckie had never been a fan of Kipling, so he had never cracked open this particular book. He had never, until this very moment, seen the name  _E. B. Sledge_ written in a neat, square hand at the top of the page. His jaw dropped.

“How…?”

“You got it from Sid, and he got it from me, the day before he shipped off to boot camp.”

“Oh.” There was an awkward pause; ever since that disastrous night, they had never discussed any of Sledge’s previous crushes, although Leckie knew that Sid had been thoroughly delighted at the prospect of him moving to Alabama. “Did you, um, recognize…?” he began in a stilted way.

“What, on Pavuvu? Sure,” Sledge shrugged, and he cracked a real grin. “In about two days I learned he’d slept with a woman and given away my book. It’s a good thing he was shipping out already before I could kill him.” He chuckled and set the Kipling aside. “Well, it’s good to get it back. Thank you.”

He seemed to mean it, and Leckie’s heart lightened.

“Hardly a good gift, though, if it’s rightfully yours,” he grinned. “Luckily I came prepared. Next one,” he said, indicating the second book.

“What’s this?” Sledge said curiously, turning it over. It was an old volume and the grooves on the spine were hard to read, but before Sledge could check the title page Leckie blurted it out.

“ _The_   _Odyssey_ ,” he declared, beaming. “You haven’t read it yet, have you?”

“No,” Sledge snorted. “After _The Iliad_? God, no.”

“Eugene, I drove all the way down here, don’t make me turn around. I promise there’s no catalogue of the ships in this one. And I think you’ll find it both relatable and elegant.”

“That’s a tall order,” Sledge warned.

“I know.” Leckie held out his hand, and Sledge passed the book over. Leckie opened to the first page and cleared his throat. “ _Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy_ ,” he read. “ _Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home_ …”

He closed the book with a snap and set it down on top of the Kipling and the book Sledge had been reading when he arrived. Eugene was staring at him again with a soft smile on his face. He looked down and ran his hand over the covers of the books. Any other day, any other place, Leckie would have to keep his distance. But here, now, on the porch of their own house in the middle of the day with no neighbors peeking behind the curtain, he took a chance. He covered Eugene’s hand with his own and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Safely home,” Sledge repeated in a murmur, and what Leckie heard was  _welcome home_.


End file.
